Immortal
by HermioneNCompany
Summary: Hermione accidentally becomes immortal. A story about mortality, divinity, love, and war.
1. The Beginning

**Immortal, 1**

**The Beginning**

It took six long, backbreaking years of training to become certified and able to work alone as an Unspeakable in the Time Department. In the beginning, her days consisted of interval training; curse breaking in the morning, lunch, history and time binding spells in the early afternoon, and hands on training until the end of her workday. In her spare time she was encouraged to study ancient runes and practice meditation. During her orientation, Hermione had furrowed her brow at this prospect and asked her director, Saul, what meditation had to do with her job description.

"I find that those who are constantly caught up in the mechanics of time tend to need a very strong mind, devoid of distractions and stress. Meditation is key," he explained, and left it at that.

The job was more of a lifestyle than a profession and Hermione relished in the control it provided her. She basked in organization and her every move was meticulously planned and outlined. This career path helped her balance her desire for control and her desire for excitement. Harry claimed she was too wound up and needed to take a long vacation.

_'Who can take a vacation from time?'_ She mused.

Predictably, Harry and Ron were working as Aurors, though they were scarcely allowed to be partners on missions. Harold Bogsby, the head of magical law enforcement, had issued a mandatory participation in mock missions for each new trainee. The boys had a lengthy history with one another which gained them some points, for they could often anticipate the other's next move. However, they ultimately lost their partnership privileges after their fighting styles were deemed incompatible. Harry often encouraged Ron, but it was obvious that Harry was simply a natural. Ron regularly struggled with speed and creativity under pressure. Luckily, he was beginning to see some improvement in his mock mission tests and written examinations. Naturally, being a war hero didn't hurt his chances for a promotion, either.

The trio saw each other at gatherings on most Sundays. Their lives, while still full of excitement, proceeded in a fairly expected way. Harry and Ginny were expecting their first child, and Ginny was ready to pop at eight months. She could often be found yelling at one of her many brothers for poking her belly or suggesting cringe-worthy names for her unborn child. Sneaking chocolates around midnight was her newest hobby.

Nearly every Sunday, Ron took it upon himself to interrogate Hermione about her job.

"Ronald, for the last time, my goings on at the ministry are strictly confidential," Hermione said for the 149th time.

"_My goings on," _he mocked. "It's not like I'm gonna tell anyone_." _ She merely huffed and changed the subject.

The truth of the matter was, she _couldn't _tell him. Any of them. She had signed a magical contract; some eighteen foot parchment that could be summarized as:

_Do not inform anyone of anything related to what you do. This applies to any time for any reason. In the event that your life, in some way, depends on revealing classified information, you are encouraged to maintain your silence."_

It caused a bit of strain on her current relationships, and it made it difficult for her to make new friends.

**3:05 PM, Monday**

Hermione rifled through one of her storage shelves to see what she would like to bring with her to the next field trip to a 'time site'. So far she had packed Peruvian darkness powder, one small silver cauldron, a basic potions pack, and a Mortal Danger portkey (M.D.P.). Activating an M.D.P. immediately sent the agent directly to Saul's office. Simultaneously, a patronus is sent to St. Mungo's to alert them of a critical situation.

After packing the most obvious items, Hermione called for the small and metallic creature that currently inhabited her office. She named the enigmatic beastie Dorian. Dorian had been carefully extracted from an Egyptian crypt six months previously. He had the strangest ability to freeze time and space within a certain radius. After disturbing the locals for quite some time, Hermione had been called in to confiscate the creature . He was a fascinating thing to examine, when she not busy with field missions, and when he was not being shy.

Dorian could sometimes be quite charming, for a creature who did not speak any identifiable language. He would beep and blip and chirp at her, waving his tiny robotic arms around dramatically. Contrarily, he could also be a real pain in the arse. He was quite enamored with Hermione and often bothered her when she was knee deep in paperwork. Once, she had ignored him for so long that he upended a large stack of files she had perched on the edge of her desk. She cursed at him as he fled the scene of the crime.

That was months ago, though, and today he could hopefully be of some real use. She asked him to quietly sit with the rest of her equipment whilst she sped towards the exit. She needed to look something up quickly in the Ministry's library on basement level five.

**3:38 PM**

Half an hour later, Hermione was leaving the library and walking back to the lift so that she could finish packing in her office. On her way out of the library, however, she ran into Luna Lovegood.

"Hello Hermione, pleasant day today," Luna said dreamily.

"Yes, but I'm on a tight schedule today. I'm just about to head out. Are you going to the Weasley's on Sunday?" Hermione implored, already walking past her.

"Yes, or I'll send my sweet Diggle in my stead," the wispy girl called out and floated off towards the library. Hermione shook her head whimsically, smiling. Luna claimed that 'Diggle' was the true name of her hare patronus.

Luna took a position at the Department of Mysteries at the same time Hermione did, six and a half years ago. Though, the only thing Hermione knew of the girl's position was that she worked in the Brain Room. One time though, temporarily forgetting the ban on classified information, Luna offhandedly mentioned that the brains were actually quite nice, once you got to know them.

Similarly, Luna only knew that Hermione was an employee in the Time Room. Regardless of knowing little about each other's career specifics, Luna's easy-going attitude made her impossible to not get along with, and she often accompanied Hermione to the Burrow on Sunday afternoons.

As the lift opened from the fifth floor, Hermione's mused grin turned to a heavy frown.

"Malfoy," she muttered, instantly annoyed. _The brat hasn't aged a day,_ she thought self-consciously.

"Granger," the blonde man replied. _Know it all._

The lift descended in awkward silence.

She had heard through the grape vine that Malfoy Jr. worked as an Obliviator on level three. Somehow, his family had managed to evade heavy judicial punishment after the war, primarily due to their pusillanimous actions. Heavily fined by the Wizengamot instead, the only Malfoy heir had been forced to sink to the rest of the world's level and get a job.

The Malfoy's dirty laundry was a common point of conversation for many witches and wizards, and the Daily Prophet felt little shame in airing it. Only Narcissa still resided in the opulent manor, yet she remained isolated by the steady stream of bad press. Further adding to her woes, Lucius had died quite suddenly only six months after the war ended. The official cause of death was listed as a heart attack, though many assumed depression, wrought by social exile, had pushed him to commit suicide.

The elevator chimed and, fortunately, the blonde exited on the next floor without a word.

Hermione wasted no more time thinking of the shortcomings of the Malfoy regime, and focused instead on remembering all the things she wanted to bring along to her impending field excursion.

**6:59 PM**

Hermione Granger focused on the slip of paper that she held in her hand. It showed the top page of her current mission details:

_Guardian Number: 712 _

_Field Mission: To investigate and contain the source of a time-disturbance. A local Ministry contact confirms that numerous muggles have come into contact with the object(s). Though no deaths have been confirmed, several missing person's cases in the area remain unsolved. Known affectations of contact include amnesia, ataxia, disorientation, drowsiness, dysphoria, light-headedness and pruritis._

_Guardian 712 is to approach a Ministry contact for a full debriefing at 1900 hrs. _

_Location: Latitude 37.1833 degrees S; longitude 67.3667 degrees W, Argentina_

_Contact: Auqui Unknown/Sur_

_Extra Materials provided: _

_Language Mints: Quechuan_

_Self-sustaining Field Tent_

_Evidence bags_

_Dehydrated meat strips_

_An M.D. portkey will be provided by request only_

_Expected Length of Time on Site: Unknown_

_Muggles in area; discretion is advised. _

_Additional reading materials provided: see attached._

As her watch chirped 7 o'clock, she focused on the coordinates listed on the paper and disapparated with a small pop.

**7:00 PM**

She reappeared on the edge of a lush jungle. The smell of campfire reached her nose and she breathed in the soothing scent. Moments later, a man could be seen walking towards her. He was dark-skinned, relatively short and he wore the traditional clothing seen in this region.

Hermione reached inside her draw-purse and pulled out her language mints. She popped one in her mouth and smiled when her contact finally reached her.

"Good evening," Hermione said, bowing. She had not unexpectedly done a fair amount of research on the old tribes who still spoke Quechua. The man bowed low in return.

"The whole village has gathered for your arrival," he said in a surprisingly deep voice. "Before we meet the others, I want to formally thank your department for sending a representative. I am Auqui. My village lies just beyond those trees there. Were you informed that everyone here is magic-less by birth, besides myself? The others do not know the full extent of my abilities, so I ask that you maintain open ignorance of the subject.

"You will meet my grandmother, who 'runs the show' as they say. Although the village is wary of foreigners, they have agreed to allow your visit due to the severity of the circumstances. The situation we greet you with is very disconcerting. My cousin Jarib has gone missing, and despite our continued searches and night patrols, he has yet to be found.

"Many odd things have been happening in the past few months. As the village healer, I have seen many ailments, but the most perplexing is the recent bout of disorientation some of the villagers have been presenting. We've found them forgetting even the most basic things about themselves; their name, where they've been for days, or even being ignorant that any time has passed at all. Sometimes their memories come back to them after a stretch of time, but many have to be retaught basic skills. The affliction appears to be random and without knowing the exact cause…," he trailed off, gravely.

Hermione nodded. "First, I will listen to personal accounts from everyone, and then I will need to ask them some questions. Before I continue, however, I need you to sign this magical contract," Hermione stated primly, pulling out a stack of parchments from her draw purse and handing it over to her contact.

"Basically it boils down to; you let me do my job and answer all my questions to the best of your ability. Also I need your permission to remove any people and property deemed hazardous by our department."

He signed it in a flourish and handed it back to her.

"Follow me," Auqui said.

Hermione glanced at the rising full moon and trailed after him. After a short walk, the village came into view.

Several structures were erected in a semicircle, surrounding a fire pit which already held a crackling fire. Every person in the village's head snapped up at the sound of their arrival. Most of the faces appeared stoic and uneasy, although a few smiled apprehensively.

Hermione swirled the mint around in her mouth before saying, "Greetings."

Two younger men helped an old woman to her feet. Hermione quickly understood that this woman was in charge. She wore thick, dyed purple garments from head to toe, despite the humid heat. Her ears were heavily pierced and gauged. Another piercing hung heavily from the center of her nose.

"You may enter," the woman spoke. "We have great appreciation for your visit."

Hermione entered the area surrounding the fire.

"Thank you for welcoming me into your home," Hermione said warmly in flawless Quechua, taking a vacant seat on a stump.

"So, I assume that Auqui has filled you in on some of the unusual circumstances that have been occurring?" the elder asked.

"I have been briefly introduced, but I would like to hear your theories on what might be going on, if you don't mind," Hermione said, pulling out her Ministry notebook and a self-inking quill from her bag. She also retrieved another language mint and popped it in her mouth.

"It's the Devil, himself!" One woman cried from the far side of the fire. She looked visibly upset and clutched her shawl tightly around her.

"Oh hush, Mayta," the man beside her scoffed, rolling his eyes.

"It is! He has taken those who have given into temptation!" Mayta exclaimed.

Auqui threw his hands up, "Jarib would not have yielded to any sort of Devil, I assure you. He has wandered into some trap!"

There was much murmuring, most people clearly agreeing with his statement, while still others shook their head in dismay. Finally the muttering died down. A small girl, only about eight or nine years old, spoke up then. "Grandmother told me a God lived in the forest," she said shyly, glancing at Hermione.

"Go on, it's alright," Hermione encouraged.

"Well, she said he is very, very old. He probably has a really long beard! He lives inside a dark cave in the jungle. He is the God of Time, and that is why people get lost and forget what day it is when they get near him. Grandmother said he even created the moon and the stars to keep him company through his endless nights," the girl said, using her best mysterious voice.

Hermione looked around at the other villagers, unsurprised to see several more nodding in agreement. The tale had surely been told a myriad of times over many generations. In these old settlements it was not uncommon for superstition to run rampant, but her line of work found it was also common to find some degree of truth in the tales.

Auqui, who had taken a seat next to Hermione at some point during the discussion, leaned over to speak quietly in her ear.

"Personally, I believe it was some powerful, dark wizard who cast protective charms around an area in the forest many moons ago. He probably was trying to protect many valuable treasures. You are not the first to come to see what this is all about. Many treasure seekers have tried and failed. Some have even ended up in St. Mungo's to be sure, although I am unaware of their fates," he whispered.

Hermione nodded. That was what her mind had been leading her towards as well. She also believed it could have been some kind of dark magical object that had been abandoned or hidden in the jungle by someone who did not want it to be found. It was hard to say with such vague descriptions. This was her job, however, and it sounded like she had dealt with more complicated cases than this.

"Besides Jarib, are there any others of you who have gone missing and are not accounted for?" Hermione asked the group.

"My cousin Caiya has been missing for three harvests. We had her death ceremony last month, though we never recovered her body," a young man stated.

Several people listed missing family members and missing neighbors. Others described family members who were "just not the same", after returning from a visit to the jungle for supplies.

Hermione wrote all of their statements down in her Ministry notebook, and made a few other notes of her own. She was unsure what Auqui had told the rest of the villagers about what exactly she did. _Why do they think I'm writing down all their statements?_ She had found that giving out the least amount of information about her profession, the better, but still she was curious to know their thought processes.

"How far out do you venture into the jungle on a regular basis? Do you travel in groups?" Hermione asked the group.

A man she had not heard from yet spoke, "Usually only about a mile or two. We try not to abuse the natural state of the jungle, if possible. We look for fallen limbs and trees and make a habit of replanting as we go, to maintain the habitat. But, with all the disappearances lately, we have been cutting into our winter stores because people are afraid to go in."

Hermione jotted a few more things down and then nodded at everyone.

"Okay, well that about sums it up. Thank you for all of your statements. I hope you will rest easy tonight, as I am going to try to figure out what this mess is all about. If luck is on my side, your family and friends will be recovered on this journey. At the very least I hope to have some new information for you about what tragedy has befallen this place. If there are no other questions or concerns, I will be leaving to set up camp over in the valley nearby. I will be going into the jungle tomorrow to conduct some experiments," Hermione explained, adjusting her bag to her shoulder. "So, if there are no other comments, I ask that you do not disturb me once I have set up camp, because I will be meditating."

For all their story telling and talkativeness before, no one spoke up now. After a while, the elder woman gestured to several strong looking men who immediately helped her to stand, with the aid of an engraved cane. She turned to Hermione and bowed.

"Once again, we thank you for investigating this. If you should need anything at all from the camp, I am sure Auqui will be able to oblige you," the woman said, and then nodded in the direction of her dwelling. The two men began walking along side the woman as she made her way to back to her home.

Hermione said her goodbyes to the rest of the encampment, nodded to Auqui, and then headed back to the clearing where she first apparated to.

**3:00 AM, Tuesday**

Hermione was roused from her quilt by an unknown source. Half-asleep, she reached for her notebook to record being awoken from a deep slumber. After almost a year of being in the field, she had acknowledged that even the smallest things ought to be written down so that she could evaluate the events later for important information. Ron might call this obsessive.

She unzipped her field tent and peered outside. Millions of stars greeted her from the heavens. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, though, and she could hear many nocturnal animals making noises from their dwellings inside the jungle. Still, at the urging of her instincts, she emerged from her tent and zipped it back into place. She stood completely still for a moment, willing the cause of her abrupt awakening to materialize.

Nothing immediately came to her attention, but still, she was intrigued. Something very subtle tickled her senses, coaxing her to take a few steps away from her camp site.

_Perhaps a little exploring wouldn't hurt._

Hermione turned to unzip her field tent.

"Dorian, would you mind coming along?" Hermione implored quietly into the tent.

She heard a series of beeps and shuffling as Dorian moved around. Suddenly, a loud ripping noise came from the opposite side of the tent.

"Dorian! What in Merlin's beard are you doing?" Hermione scolded.

In his haste to comply, the small creature had burst through the side of the tent, like some sentient bulldozer. He let out a low tone and then scuttled madly into the clearing. He twisted his animatronic body around in a few circles, examining his surroundings. Finally, he turned back to Hermione, as if awaiting her instructions.

Exasperated, Hermione threw her hands up in the air and whispered expletives under her breath.

Sighing, she reached through the ripped part of her tent and grabbed her draw-purse from within. She then whispered a quick 'reparo' and watched as the fabric stitched itself together once more. She cast a glare to Dorian, but he was off examining a large rock some distance away. She shrank her bag and put it in her pocket, a habit she had grown used to so that she would only have to worry about her wand arm, should something unexpected happen. Dorian, of course, could take care of himself.

Hermione glanced up anew at the bright, full moon and speculated if it was this that had awoken her. It was a well known fact in the magical world that each of the different phases of the moon held a variety of different magical properties. A full moon and a lunar eclipse were the most powerful phases and, most would argue, the most dangerous.

_If nothing showed itself tonight,_ she told herself, _then there would be no harm in trying again tomorrow night when the moon began to wane._

"Come along, Dorian," Hermione said, taking strides towards the dark jungle.

As she entered the tree line, Hermione cast a night-vision charm on her eyes. It was best to avoid using a lumos spell in the jungle, as there were many nocturnal beasts lurking within. There was also a high probability that some magical beings hid inside as well, shrouded in darkness. The magical creatures knew that they would only remain undisturbed if they roamed at night, away from the neighboring muggles prying eyes.

Hermione walked the perimeter of the forest for about a mile, only stopping once she had passed the village. Dorian scuttled by her side, his body spinning on its axis when he thought he had detected something interesting.

Not unexpectedly, nothing of interest was found on the perimeter. It was ominously quiet, though, as if the thousands of creature that lurked within the jungle were watching her with bated breath. She shook off the uneasy feeling and gripped her wand tightly.

* * *

Review! :]

P.S. I have recently updated the first 6 chapters to fix spelling errors and strange phrasing. 11/23/15


	2. Red Smoke

**Immortal, 2**

**Red Smoke**

**3:54 AM, Tuesday**

Hermione hiked a mile and a half into the jungle. Fortunately, the darkness instilled no particular fear for her anymore. It had taken four years at the Ministry to overcome that particular hurdle, and she had no intention of giving into the dread tonight. Instead, she put her energy into finding magical signatures and using summoning charms, hoping to find something unusual.

After some time searching the dark jungle alone, Hermione sought to find her metallic accomplice, who had wandered away from her. It took a few minutes to finally locate him, but when she did he began whirring and beeping. She cautiously approached him and held her wand arm steady in front of her. Dorian's body swiveled in circles near a mound of something in the mossy soil, no doubt smug of his detective work.

"Lumos," Hermione whispered, leaning over to inspect his finding. She figured the benefits of using the spell now outweighed the risks.

She peered closer and conjured an archaeology-grade metal dusting brush to sweep away some of the soot that covered her prize. As she uncovered what lay beneath, her eyes widened.

"Oh!" Hermione exclaimed, standing up and reaching inside her pocket for her draw-purse. She kneeled down and enlarged her bag, rummaging around inside for her plastic evidence bags and gloves. She put on the gloves and reached forward to grab one of the unlikely items.

"Great work, Dorian! I never would have found this if it weren't for you! Lucky you're so short, huh?"

Dorian-the-Proud buzzed and brought himself up to his full height of two feet, two inches. If any metal creature with no obvious facial features could look pompous, he could.

Hermione moved around bits of crushed glass and metal in her gloved hand, scrutinizing it. Tiny speckles of sand fell between the cracks and fell to the ground. Hermione felt with growing certainty that this heap was made up of at least ten time turners, all smashed together and semi-buried. As she collected the pieces one by one, she let her mind wander to hypotheses on what this finding could imply.

_It was very odd indeed_, she thought. For one, the distribution of time turners was exceptionally tightly regulated. For any one person to have amassed such a large quantity of them was remarkably suspicious. Not to mention, one person would have no use for so many, when one alone would do the trick. It was a known fact that a person could not go back in time multiple times in the same juncture, even with the compounded use of several time turners. Someone in her department had discovered this ages ago.

It was particularly dangerous to go back in time for more than a few hours. Hermione recalled a book she had read during a magical history lesson. There was a passage that described a witch named Eloise Mintumble who worked as an Unspeakable over a century ago. Eloise traveled back in time nearly five hundred years to the year 1402. Here, she was unexpectedly prevented from returning to her present time for five long days. When she was finally able to return, her body promptly aged five centuries and she crumbled to dust in the waiting room of St. Mungo's. Furthermore, her time travels created a ripple in time that caused the day of her return, a Tuesday, to last nearly three days, whilst the following Thursday only lasted four hours.

_Terrible things happen to those who meddle with time._

"Procreo aluminum," Hermione whispered in the dim light. The small twig she held promptly turned into a small metal shovel.

She needed to make sure that she got all of the dirt that could possibly contain time-turner sand. It was not only very precious, but it also became unstable after a time. All time-related magic was. In fact, the Ministry of Magic had implemented the strictest laws possible for those that were provided with time-turners. Time-turner possession was hedged around literally hundreds of stringent laws, and many penalties were in place to avoid their misuse. To avoid serious chance of harm, the longest time-travelling period allotted by the Ministry was only five hours.

Just as she was scooping the last bit of dirt into her evidence bag, she paused. Looking closer at the bag she held, she realized something was quite wrong. Being an expert on the subject, she realized that the sand she was collecting did not exactly give off the right milky shimmer that was characteristic of time-turner sand.

_Maybe it has decayed, already?_ She squinted at the crushed mass.

"Dorian, I think something is off here," she said very slowly, turning around.

She realized two things in an instant. First, to her dismay, the jungle had become eerily silent. Second, she briefly acknowledged that Dorian-the-Coward had climbed up the side of a massive ficus tree. Before she could have a third thought, Dorian suddenly froze, panicked. All of time and space in a twenty yard radius was regrettably also frozen.

Hermione could see for only a short amount of time until her vision started to go grey. Another inconvenience that stemmed from Dorian's time magic was that most visual systems were based on the flow of photons through a series of cellular events in the eyes. When time was frozen, light particles were also frozen. This meant that they are unable to pass through the retina, causing everything to go temporarily black. He could usually control precisely what aspects he froze, but in times of fright his control was seriously lacking.

Hermione, in her last moments of sight, looked for what lurked in the shadows behind Dorian. A figure emerged from the darkness and walked quietly towards the light given off by her forgotten wand, which lay in the soil beside her. Deliberately, the man picked it up, brought it very close to her face and leaned down to stare into her eyes.

Surprised, but unable to voice her thoughts, she stared at her assailant. She discovered that his eyes held great depth and something much more; something nearly inhuman. How could she have missed this?

The man alarmingly remained unhampered by the frozen quality of space and time. Standing, he pointed his own wand at her.

"Forgive me," he said, and whispered something to his wand.

An unusual plume of crimson smoke crept lazily out of the tip of his wand; looking like ethereal ink droplets in water. The scentless smoke did not so much as hit her face as seep into it.

She would have glared her eyes at his deception, but all she could do was stare blankly at the same spot she was staring at when she was frozen.

Hermione let out a gargle, trying to fight her unmoving body. Nevertheless, her vision eventually failed and her thoughts began to feel fuzzy as her brain started to shut down.

_Sleep._

Finally, Dorian appeared to snap out of his stupor and his exceptionally inconvenient time-freeze was lifted.

Hermione struggled to regain consciousness quickly, but to her dismay her attacker swiftly pointed his own wand at himself.

"Avenge her," he said oddly. He then whispered something Hermione could not quite make out, and as her vision slowly returned she watched as he slumped to the ground.

Hermione was breathing very hard, now. She eventually lifted her eyes towards Dorian who showed no signs of coming down from his treetop sanctuary anytime soon.

It was some time before the rigid feeling of her arm and legs slowly disappeared. As Dorian became less panicked, he eventually scurried down to the jungle floor and stood alert by Hermione's feet. She found herself laying face first in the Argentinean jungle's soil and it was several minutes before she worked up the mental fortitude to move. As she crawled to her knees, she lifted her head to get a look at her assailant's lifeless form in the very dimmest of dawn light.

She could not breathe properly.

"Auqui," she whispered to his body, despite his treachery.

Hermione very cautiously brought her first two fingers up to his jugular vein, feeling for a pulse.

**_10:00 AM, Tuesday_**

"And then?"

Hermione shuffled the papers in her hand nervously.

"Well, he was... he was just dead," Hermione stuttered, wiping the corner of her eye that was threatening to water.

"And the body?" her director, Saul Croaker, asked as he scribbled down her responses in a lengthy report.

"I alerted the ministry law enforcement, and they collected the body."

"Which officer?"

"Officer Grey, I think."

"Are you certain there were no time-related magical items in the area that could have any continued effect on the surrounding population?" Saul asked.

"I'm unsure, the only thing I collected was the pile of t…" Hermione began but Saul cut her off.

"Those are fakes; no magical properties at all," he seemed withdrawn and irritated at the same time. Hermione thought she heard him mutter something about 'theatrics', but that did not make sense at all.

"Either way, why would they be out there in the first place?" she inquired.

Frustratingly, Saul merely continued to write in his report, but said nothing by way of reply for a full minute.

"We are not… certain at this time," he said, taking off his glasses then and rubbing them on his shirt front.

"Did you get a good look at his eyes?" he asked, putting the glasses back on.

"Well, earlier at the camp sure, but later during the attack? I don't know. I can tell you he looked odd," she said.

"Odd?"

"Odd, sir."

"So you are uncertain whether this man could have been under the Imperius curse?" he asked pointedly.

"I am unsure, sir."

"I see, I see," Saul contemplated. "And tell me again what the spell was he cast before he, er, passed?"

"It was dark red and smoky, very unusual actually. I didn't understand what he said. It sounded a bit like a sigh." Hermione was already sick with worry about the whole thing, and she was quickly becoming weary of all the questions as well.

"Well, I'm sending you to St. Mungo's for some tests. With our line of work you can never be too careful, you know that," he said, scribbling away. "I think you should see Healer Augustus Pye. He's the best in the biz."

There was a pregnant pause before her boss sensed her unasked question.

"We're sending out a team tonight to search for the missing persons and search for the time disturbance, if it is still present. It's obvious that sending in only one personnel was too dangerous. Hindsight is perfect and all that. Anyway, we'll do this by the book now," Saul resounded in his director voice.

Hermione nodded; pleased that she would not be sent back in to the jungle right away. She just wanted to get this annoying, albeit necessary, lab work out of the way so that she could go home and have a glass of wine in the bathtub. She felt like she may be too wired to sleep tonight.

"If that's all, you can go home. Take a few days off, eh?" Saul dismissed her with a wave of his hand.

After the door clicked shut, he called up to basement level two.

"Yea, could you get me Officer Grey on the line? Tell him it's Croaker down on level nine."

**11:05 AM**

When she arrived at the grand wizarding hospital, she made her way to the elevator. It would be a change from staying on the ground floor, where her job-related injuries were typically tended to. She allowed herself to be briefly pleased: the ground floor Healer, Hippocrates Smethwyck, was not a charming man. The ground floor was meant for "artifact accidents" including, but not limited to, broom crashes, wand-backfiring, cauldron eruptions, and other odd magical-object explosions. She pressed the number four and rode the elevator to the floor designated for "spell damage" related injuries.

She signed herself in and met with the specialist who performed a variety of spells and tests on her. In spite of being marginally creeped out by his final comment to her, "Well, young lady, your preliminary results look just fine. I'm just going to send off those few little vials and we should know the rest of your results within a week. Get yourself some rest, dear. You're going to need it."

Hermione raised an eyebrow, but then thanked the strange man and left for home. A glass of wine and a very long, hot bath awaited her.

**_2:00 PM, Sunday_**

"You're always on Charlie's team!" Ron exclaimed.

"Well we're getting bloody married, all right?" Harry said, grabbing his broom from the picnic table.

"You're the best player though, and Charlie's probably second," _–Hey!_ "so, he should be on my team," Ron said, ignoring Charlie's outburst.

"Oh shut it," said George. "We can whoop those twits' arses with our hands tied behind our back!"

"You couldn't win a free subscription to the Quibbler," Charlie quipped.

"Yeah well, we could win even if Hermione was on our team!" Ron yelled, mounting his broom.

"I can _hear_ you, Ronald!" Hermione called out from behind her book at the picnic table nearby.

But nobody was listening to her, because they were all mounting their brooms to begin what she called the "Sunday standard"; Quidditch, dinner, and merrymaking.

**4:30 PM**

"Is dinner ready yet?" Hermione heard Ron ask for the third time. He was covered in soot and she could swear that she could smell him from where she sat, twenty feet away.

"Stop asking me. Shoo fly," Ginny said, as she popped another cherry tomato into her mouth. Her apron cascaded off of her rounded belly, and she was red in the face. Molly bustled around behind Ginny with eight plates floating behind her. Hermione would have helped, truly, but she was helpless behind a stove; and it got worse. She would never admit to it aloud, but she was not great at using home-making spells either. She therefore avoided performing them in public, lest her competency be questioned. _Plus, I'm just getting to the good part of this book…_

Hermione turned another page at the same time that Harry plopped down on the picnic table beside her, jostling her.

"Oh, ouch," Hermione said. She put her book down and brought her finger to her mouth reflexively. "Paper cut."

"Ow Hermione! Those bloody hurt. That one looks really bad."

"Yes, I can see that," she said sarcastically, examining the gash in her right index finger. "I'll mend it later, I left my wand inside."

"Yea me too," Harry said distractedly. She saw him mouth _'food?' _to Ron and she rolled her eyes.

Eventually, she was asked to get up so that they could move the picnic table to where its twin was located, and they conjoined them to make one long table. All the dishes were either brought outside by one of the Weasley children or were magically floated outside by Molly. Arthur busied himself with the place settings. Luna chased after a garden gnome. Hermione turned another page.

"Finally, let's eat!" George announced, as Molly finally sat down to join them. An empty seat was left beside George, as it was at every meal, marking the loss of his other half, Fred. The tradition was now carried out less out of grief, and more out of love and remembrance.

Hermione finally put down her book and dug in to her meal.

"Hermione, I've been meaning to tell you how absolutely fascinating I find that object on your wrist. Tell me every detail about it," Mr. Weasley implored.

"You mean my watch?" she asked, jiggling her wrist and showing it to him.

"A watch, yes, of course," Arthur contemplated.

"Oh, most watches just tell you the time, but mine actually has a built-in compass too. And it's water-proof," she said. He looked positively gleeful.

"Most intriguing that," he said, tapping his fingernail on the glass top of it. Hermione laughed and went back to her plate.

The rest of the dinner went predictably. Harry and Charlie got into a heated argument about the use of force in Ministry law enforcement. Luna spent the majority of her time sneaking bits of mashed potatoes to a slew of garden gnomes under the table. Ginny ate four slices of German chocolate cake and then repeatedly denied that she had done so.

It was great to have all of her closest friends together once a week, although Hermione admitted that sometimes they got on her last nerve. As evidence, when everyone was finishing their deserts, Ron leaned over from her left and poked her arm. "How's being a super spy?"

"I am not a super spy, Ronald," she laughed. "But, it's fine. I actually just took the last five days off, if you'll believe it."

"Blimey, Hermione, you're just like a normal person now! What for?"

"Very funny, we had a bit of a problem on a –"

"Secret mission," he filled in.

"-a field excursion," she said over him. "My boss wanted me to get a few lab tests done. Nothing out of the ordinary."

"And what exactly –"

"You _know _I can't tell you. Anyway, I should be getting an owl this afternoon with the rest of my results and then I will be in good order to get back to the office tomorrow morning," she said, picking up her plate and signaling the abrupt end of the conversation about her job.

Or so she thought.

"Hermione, I'm your friend, aren't I?" Ron called her back sweetly.

"Ron..." Hermione warned.

"Alright, alright, no need to get your knickers in a twist. You'd let us know if anything was really wrong, though, right?"

"Of course I would," she lied.

**9:00 PM**

Hermione entered the front door to her flat and nearly tripped over a disgruntled Crookshanks.

"Hello to you too," she said to the cat. "Yes I know I'm late feeding you, but you know I go to the Weasley's on Sundays."

He merely weaved back and forth in front of her, silently demanding his dinner.

"And I have an owl."

Ignoring the orange beast's hungry glare, she walked over to the small window above her kitchen sink and unlatched it. A petite white owl, not unlike a miniature Hedwig, flew in and perched on the counter. Hermione detached the manila envelope from the bird's leg and gave it a treat before sending it back out into the night and shutting the window behind it.

Hermione carefully tore the envelope's seal apart and unfolded the parchment within.

_"Ms. Granger,_

_I am delighted to inform you that your lab results came back almost exclusively within normal limits. However, your white blood cell count was slightly elevated and we recommend that you pay special attention to this value during your next visit. Otherwise, the staff wishes you luck in all your future endeavors and thanks you for your continued loyalty to St. Mungos. Please see the attached lab forms, which detail your results._

_Best Wishes,_

_Healer Augustus Pye_

_Fourth Floor, Spell Damage_

_St. Mungo's – Serving you since 1607_

She flipped to the back page and reviewed her blood work, satisfied with the results. She had been trying her best not to worry about the whole situation, but she had to admit that the negative results allowed her to breathe a sigh of relief. Her job was often dangerous, but something about the situation last week had unnerved her in a unique way.

Pleased, Hermione folded up the paper and finally turned back to her familiar, who was flipping his tail in an annoyed fashion from atop a kitchen chair.

"Oh, calm down you old brute," she said, filling his bowl with wet food.

Fifteen minutes later, Hermione changed out of her clothes and padded quietly to the bathroom with her wand and a large tome she had taken to reading in the bath as of late.

She charmed the bath to fill with vanilla-scented bubbles and then slid in, relishing in the scalding heat. After she was sufficiently relaxed, she reached over to grab her book. As she did so, she remembered the paper cut that Harry had accidentally given her earlier that day. Instead of grabbing the book, she grabbed her wand to heal it instead.

"Vulnera se-"she started, peering closely at her finger. Then all of her fingers.

Her cut had simply vanished.

* * *

I hope you guys liked it! There are quite a few very small hints to the future worked into this chapter. What do you think?

**-H**

**P.s. I just fixed a bunch of errors in this story up to chapter 6 11/23/15 (discontinuity errors, wrong floor of ministry, typos, etc.) woo**


	3. The Art of Snooping

**Immortal, 3**

**The Art of Snooping**

**10:00 AM, Monday**

Upon arriving at work for the first time in a week, Hermione was immediately accosted by Saul. Saul Croaker was a large, grizzled Italian man who was in unusually good shape in spite of having aged through the better part of five decades. For this reason, as well as because of his prowess with a wand, the man was still a bit intimidating to Hermione despite having worked in his department for over six years.

"Granger, glad you got a clean bill of health. How ya feeling? Listen, the coroner's report on that, uh, guy down in Argentina came in. I'd like it if you'd take a look at it. The clean-up crew added some notes as well: I dropped them in your mailbox. I can't really stay and chat about the reports, but something looks a bit weird. Can't, uh, really put my finger on it."

"Yes, sir, I'll have a look at them."

"I'm on my way out of the office for the next few days, maybe a week. Got a guy in Guam who says he's built a clock that can transport him into the future, can you believe that?" He scoffed. "I tell ya, these nutters are a dime-a-dozen."

Hermione laughed, wished him luck on his trip, and headed to her office.

She found Dorian sitting near her enchanted window, sunbathing.

"Good morning, Dorian," she sing-songed.

He chirped half-heartedly, dozing.

There was a large stack of mail on her desk that had accumulated in her absence. She shuffled through the envelopes until she found the autopsy report.

AUTOPSY REPORT -3- "UNKNOWN/SUR, AUQUI 04-1737"

IDENTIFICATION: The body is identified by a blue Medical Examiner's tag around the right ankle bearing the decedent's name and case number. Blue tag # 0000464.

Coroner: Percival Edgecome; asst. Officer T. Ogden

CLOTHING AND PERSONAL EFFECTS: The following clothing items and personal effects are present on the body at the time of autopsy:

1\. N/A – removed for police evidence

MEDICAL INTERVENTION:

1\. None.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: Subject appears externally to be a young man in his 20's. However, subject shows advanced stages of decay in the internal organs, including the brain. The heart already shows signs of putrification, despite the corpse being delivered less than one hour before this report was made. Due to the state of decay, it is of my impression that the heart failed first, followed by the rest of the body. I fully anticipate the outward appearance of the corpse to deteriorate soon.

CAUSE OF DEATH:

Unknown

...

Hermione skimmed the rest of the gory description and then grabbed the next envelope in her stack. She ripped it open.

_ "Ministry of Magic, Department of Magical Law Enforcement (MLE): Death Investigation"_

_ Case number 04-1737 Decedent: "Auqui"_

_Investigation:__ Detective Edgar Bones and Officer Bane Grey from the Ministry of Magic Department of Magical Law Enforcement have officially reported this case as a natural death (vs. accidental). The Ministry's coroner, Percival Edgecombe, gave a detailed report, and in confluence with Officer Tiberius Ogden's (of the dept. MLE) report, were the primary source by which this final decision was made. Upon the completion of the body examination at the hospital, the decedent was transported by Officer Grey to the Coroner's Forensic Magic Center (FMC). _

_Location:_

_Place of death: CLASSIFIED, contact FMC for details._

_Informant/Witness Statements: _

_The following information is preliminary and subject to change pending further investigation by the appropriate law enforcement agency._

_Hermione J. Granger, Unspeakable; level five of the Ministry, witnessed the death of the decedent..._

Hermione perused through the transcripts of her interrogation with Saul after the events in question.

_What was it that Saul thought was fishy here? Besides the fact that this was obviously not a natural death. And Tiberius Ogden… where had she heard that name?_

"Tiberius Ogden, Tiberius Ogden…" she repeated aloud. Dorian finally perked his head up at her.

He stretched, jumped down off his perch, and scuttled over to her. He jumped up onto her desk and opened the top drawer.

"Hey!"

Dorian ignored her and rifled through her things with wild abandon. He snatched a small notebook with his pincer-like grasp and placing it on her desk, rudely leaving scattered quills strewn about on the floor. He flipped through the notebook with machine-precision movements until he abruptly stopped and beeped once at Hermione.

She peered down at the Ministry directory that he had opened to a page that clearly displayed the words "Ogden, Tiberius. Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Magical Law Enforcement Patrol Division, level 2."

"What would a patrol officer be doing watching over an autopsy? He's not even in the investigation department," she wondered aloud.

Dorian whirred at her, as if to say "What, indeed."

Tuesday, 3:05 PM

Hermione wasted no time barging into his office, holding a stack of parchment concealed inside a manila envelope.

"Harry, what do you know about Tiberius Ogden?" Hermione asked Harry in his office the next day. He barely batted an eye at her intrusion: he had magical wards in place alerting him to creeps approaching his office, and Hermione apparently did not fit the bill.

"Ogden, like the firewhiskey?"

"No, he's a wizard in your department," Hermione pressed.

"Is he? Well, I don't know the bloke. He's not an Auror, I can tell you that." Harry paused for a minute in thought, before saying, "Wait a minute, Ogden… Ogden… Why does that sound familiar to me?"

"I said the same thing," she said. "I figured you might know. Well, think about it and if you come up with anything just send a memo to my office. Or I'll be at my flat after six and you can just send your owl. I think I'm going to head to the…"

"Library, yep, got it" Harry finished offhandedly, running his hand through his already messy hair. "Sure you can't tell me what this is about?"

"Not at the moment, but I'll keep you updated," Hermione said predictably.

Harry smiled, knowing his secretive friend would be unlikely to confide in him. It was funny how people changed over the years. He, for one, had definitely calmed down since leaving Hogwarts. _Well, I still almost get blown up from time to time and there is that whole "saving-people thing" that didn't exactly go away, but that is part of my job description, damn it._

Hermione said goodbye and left. She was determined not to be let down by Harry's lack of intel and was instead excited to be on the trail of something. Although she was not technically a detective, her job did require some sleuthing periodically. _Ron might be inclined to call it snooping, but what did he know? _She smiled to herself and headed in the direction of the lifts.

4:00 PM

It did not take very long for Hermione to accumulate information on the Ogden family from the records section of the Ministry's library. The reason both Harry and she had recognized the surname Ogden was because Tiberius Ogden had a father named Bob Ogden, who was a very well-known man. Bob Ogden was the head of the Magical Law Enforcement Squad, as it was called then, in the 1920's. He famously headed the mission that culminated in the arrest of Morfin and Marvolo Gaunt, Voldemort's uncle and grandfather, respectfully, on his mother's side.

There was a picture of Bob in the old copy of The Daily Prophet that she currently held in her hands. He was a plump man, wearing enormously thick glasses that reduced his eyes to mole-like specks. He was noted for being a very competent wizard and straight-to-the-point kind of guy. Harry was also correct, in that Bob's great, great, great grandfather Billius Ogden was the inventor of Ogden's Old Firewhiskey.

Bob had apparently had a child, Tiberius, rather late in his life. He kept the child very much out of the spotlight, so much so in fact, that it was not until Bob's untimely death that Tiberius was seen in the public realm.

Many briefly speculated that there was something odd about the Ogdens.

However, Tiberius Ogden turned out to be an alright guy. _On paper, at least._ He ended up joining the Department like his father. It turns out, he was a natural, but he apparently did not crave the climb up the corporate ladder. He ended up looking quite a bit like his old man too, if his department photo was anything to go by.

Hermione was deep in thought, looking around the room inattentively.

Abruptly, she caught the eye of someone across the room who had clearly been staring at her. Her eyes narrowed.

"What are you doing here, Malfoy?" she spat, a little too aggressively. She felt foolish for getting caught off guard by him.

"Is that any way to greet your better, Granger?"

"For your information, my office has jurisdiction over yours, you tosser," she cajoled, aggravated at how quickly he could turn her into a rowdy third year. He raised an eyebrow at her.

"Oh, what is it you want?" she grudgingly asked while she scooped up all the articles and images she had copied into a neat pile.

"Who says I want anything?"

"You were sitting there staring at me, Malfoy."

"I was not _staring._ I was observing."

She gawked at him before snorting derisively. She put the rest of her files in the handy manila envelope that she had conjured. She turned on her heel and headed for the exit.

He caught up to her precisely eight seconds later. He pointed at the folder she carried, and asked, "What have you got your nose in to now, Granger?"

"That is certainly none of your business," she said, looking at him incredulously. "Did you accidentally obliviate yourself or something? Why are you talking to me?"

"Circe, calm down. You're always so on edge. I merely heard you were out of the office last week. Bit of a problem South of the equator?" he asked conspiratorially.

She slowed her walking as she approached the lift. She almost thought he was implying something about her time-of-the-month and nearly exploded. Then she realized he must have been referring to the incident in Argentina. "I don't know what you're… how could you possibly know anything about that? That's classified information!"

"Gods, listen to you. _That's classified information!"_ he mocked. "I had to go down there and deal with all the muggles, you know, the ones who were bewitched? Hell of a big job; it took me all week to sort it out."

"By 'sort it out', I assume you mean you just obliviated everyone? Probably at random," she scornfully asked.

"Yes, amongst other things. And hey, somebody has to do it," he said glibly.

"Can I go now?"

He scowled at her, but held his hands up in surrender. "Whatever."

Hermione made a rude gesture behind his back and then called for the lift. On the way down, she refused to think about how exceptionally irritating that conversation had been.

**6:00 PM**

Hermione arrived home and immediately kicked off her shoes, threw her bags on the floor, and flopped face first into the couch. She let out a deep sigh, reminding herself that she really needed to take some time to meditate tonight. Meditation was only an effective tool when it was made into a habit.

Crookshanks made his grand entrance into the living room and jumped up on the couch. He peered down at her from the back of it, like some woolly gargoyle.

"Hello Crooks," she said, flipping on her back and reaching up to scratch his cheeks.

Crookshanks meowed and began purring, seemingly enjoying the attention. Secretly, he was only trying to persuade her to make him an early dinner.

"I haven't been home very much, have I? Maybe I should get you a friend?" Hermione asked her familiar, continuing to pet him.

The half-kneazle merely stared unblinkingly at her with his big almond-shaped eyes. _Feed the handsome cat, feed the handsome cat, _Crookshanks hypnotized her silently.

She eventually sighed and stood up. "Well, I guess I'll make you your dinner early, how about that, big guy?"

Inwardly, Crookshanks smiled smugly, pleased that his scheme had worked so quickly.

**Thursday, 8:00 PM**

Crookshanks pressed his flat orange face against his mistress' kitchen window. His yellow eyes moved back and forth in synchrony with the swishing of his bottle brush tail, as he watched the small figure hovering outside.

_Just a bit closer, yes, let me see what you're made of on the inside…_

"Off the cabinet, Crooks," Hermione scolded, shooing her companion away from the window, so that she could unlatch it. The tiny barn owl flew inside, and stayed very clear of snatching distance. Miffed, Crookshanks meowed deeply to show his displeasure, and went off to hunt wolf-spiders instead.

_Foiled again, _he thought.

After much coaxing, Hermione removed the attached letter, thanked the bird with a treat, and sent it on its way.

"It's a letter from Harry," she said absentmindedly.

_Hermione,_

_Hey, just realized, I think that guy you were talking about, Tiberius Ogden, was one of the blokes from the Wizengamot during my trial with Dudley and the Dementors. I think someone (Luna maybe?) mentioned to me that he resigned over Umbridge's appointment to High Inquisitor, so I'm pretty sure he was on our side. Not really sure where he might be now though. Hope this helps!_

_Best,_

_Harry_

_P.S. I don't think this owl likes going over to your flat, it nearly bit my hand off when I tried to tie this parchment to its leg!_

**Thursday, 4:30 PM**

A day had passed before Hermione had worked out exactly what she was going to say to Officer Ogden, and another day before she could track him down.

She found him leaning against Hogsmeade's one and only Honey Dukes, eating what appeared to be a pumpkin pasty. He was easy to spot, because he sported his father's signature glasses which turned his eyes into those of a caricature.

Upon her approach, Hermione casually joked to the man, "Quite the dull treat you have there, if you got it from Honey Dukes. What with all the more interesting sweets they have to offer; Acid Pops, Pepper Imps, and Mice Ice, oh my."

The man looked left and right down the alley, and then eventually let a slow smile creep onto his face. Hermione found the expression to be somehow unpleasant, but she was not sure if that was simply due to his absolutely retched dental hygiene.

"Yessa, I do like ta sample all the treats they come out with over the years. I always seem ta come back to this simple beaut, though," he said, gesturing to the barely-there confection. "Ta what do I owe the pleasure, Miss Granger?"

"How do you know my name," Hermione squinted her eyes at him suspiciously.

The man smiled again, bigger than before. "Lassy, everyone knows who ya're."

Chagrined, she backtracked, "Oh yes, sorry, of course."

He took another bite of his treat and stared at her, obviously waiting for her to explain why she had come.

"Yes well, I'll just get right to it then. Why were you observing that autopsy, on Monday? The man who was-"

"…pract'lly disintegrating?" Ogden finished her sentence. "Yessa, I was there. Boss's orders."

"Harold Bogsby?" Hermione said, referring to the Head of the Magical Law Enforcement.

"Nah, I work for another organization as well," he said, popping the last bit of the Pumpkin Pasty into his mouth and wiping his hands on his trousers.

"And which organization might that be?"

"Well, I'd say that's nunayer business," he said.

_To be fair, he was right._ _But then why was he being sneaky about it?_ She thought.

"Well, I was just curious on account of the manner in which Aqu- the man, died. I was there, you know, when he…" She trailed off.

He smiled his unsightly grin again, and said, "Yessa, I know. Let's just say I work for a special sector of the M.L.E. Strictly confidential, aint'it?"

"I…"

Hermione thought back to all the times that she had used the phrase "strictly confidential", especially when arguing with Ron, and she shuddered slightly in her recompense. She was mentally going through her next course of action to best extract information from him, when Tiberius cleared his throat.

"Well, I gotta be gettin' back to my patrol. You have a good day now lass. And tell that old bear, Saul, I send my regards," the man said. He put his hands in his pockets and pushed himself off the wall.

Hermione puffed herself up, as if he was being rude, but he had already turned his back. He was halfway down the alleyway when she acknowledged that in truth, she had waltzed up to him and practically accused him of being up to something. Sometimes she really _was_ too Gryffindor for her own good. _Well, that had not gone as planned, but I can use some of this information to my advantage._

She forced a determined smile onto her face, and disapperated with a small 'pop'.

**Friday, 8:00 AM**

The lifts from the Ministry of Magic descended at a snail's pace, in her opinion. Admittedly, the Department of Mysteries was on the second to the lowest floor, so Hermione always found herself waiting for numerous witches and wizards to board and depart the lift, no matter which floor she was coming from. Hermione thought there were numerous better methods for inter-Ministry travel, but the Minister refused to hear about it on any of the numerous times she had attempted the discussion. In fact, she was just back from his office on level one, to have just such a talk, but she had apparently missed him. Or he had hidden from her. She scoffed. _So__me people just do not do well with change._

The descent continued and at level three, a blonde shock of hair attached to a slender body boarded the lift. Hermione ducked her head down and thanked Merlin for once that there were many so many people on the lift today. She refused to examine why she was hiding from Malfoy. Suffice it to say, there were a multitude of reasons to avoid the snake, and any one of them would suit her just fine.

A few people got off on level four, and by level five, she hoped he would just get off already. Finally, just when she thought he was going to stay on for another floor, he walked slowly towards the elevator doors, last in line to depart. He tactfully turned his head and looked at her sideways, apparently aware that she had been there the whole time. He squinted his eyes as if he was waiting for something, but when Hermione just stared back at him and sneered, he curled his lip back at her and walked out of view.

The lifts closed. Hermione unclenched her fists.

**8:15 AM**

"Merlin, how could I have forgotten?" Hermione asked herself out loud as she stood in front of Saul's office door.

The large oak door was firmly closed, as Saul had gone out of the country for the next who-knows-when. Hermione was set on asking her boss _nicely _about his affiliation with one Tiberius Ogden. Now, she had to wait until at least Monday when work resumed after the weekend. _And that's _if _he has returned by then…_

Hermione stared at her director's door a bit longer, as it had a few photos magically attached to it, presumably of his family and friends. There was a younger woman and a boy, as well as a few other people. Some of the photos were magical, while at least two others remained stationary. One of the muggle photos was of Saul and another man, scuba-diving. To the right of this photo, a lone sticker was stuck to the oaken frame. It read, _"We Don't Skinny Dip, We Chunky Dunk!"_ which Hermione found quite amusing. She still had not asked her boss about any of this, and since he had not brought it up himself, she felt like the whole thing might just be too personal. Everyone in this department tended to be a bit secretive by nature, anyway.

She snorted and turned on her heel, ready to head to the Time Room and check some other things off her to-do list. She was Hermione Granger, after all.

**4:30 PM**

"What are you doing here? Did you get off early?" The redhead asked her friend, as she closed the door behind her.

"Yes, I thought I'd surprise you. I was thinking we could go to that new place in Diagon Alley, and have ourselves a girl's afternoon."

"Oh that sounds absolutely wonderful, Hermione. Harry's been at work all day and mum keeps sending owls over. I swear, there are hundreds of them," Ginny said melodramatically.

"I'm sure you're going a bit stir crazy then. I know I desperately need to get a haircut. I was thinking about going a bit shorter, what do you think?" Hermione asked.

"Yes, I've always thought you should try it out. And if you don't like it, you can always re-grow it over night like Bill used to do when mum finally got a hold of him." The girls both laughed and then Ginny trotted off to her room and promised to be 'ready in a knut'.

**6:45 PM**

They were leaving the newest shop edition to Diagon Alley, _Curl up and Dry,_ when Hermione turned to Ginny with delight, and said, "Oh Ginny, my hair cut looks perfect. I never thought I would like it this short."

"I told you, I knew it would look great," Ginny agreed. "Just above the shoulders, nice layers; you won't be able to keep the men off of you!"

"Oh sure, look at them lining up," Hermione joked.

"Well there was that one guy…"

"Oh please do _not _bring him up again," Hermione whined.

"I think he might have had a really nice… ahem… personality," Ginny snickered.

"He had tentacles!"

"Only a few, only a few!" They both burst out laughing.

The rest of their day went as well as it could. The girls eventually separated when night swiftly descended upon them. Hermione thought that dusk seemed unusually short this evening, almost as if the world were urging her to sleep. As if the night had a secret it desperately wanted to tell her.

* * *

**Please read and review! Please, please, please!**

_A/N:_ There are quite a few hints again as to what is going to be coming up, and also a few random bits of information that may have no plot-value, but you'll never know which!

Also, as you can tell, this story is very time-oriented. You will see a lot of time-related words, like seconds, minutes, years and you'll see lots of clocks and mentions of what time it is, etc. I hope it's not too overpowering. But I wanted it to have this strong theme.

Yes, I am for some reason obsessed with writing Crookshanks in this story, I don't know why!

Finally, if you remember Tiberius Ogden as being described as an "Elder" member of the Wizengamot, just disregard, he'll be a bit middle-agey here, so call me AU :P

_Side note:_ To the person who thought these hints sounded a bit like _Speaker for the Dead_, that is very funny, because that is the most recent book that I have read! Maybe I'm getting subtle inspiration!


	4. Revelations

Immortal, 4

**Revelations**

**Sometime in the early hours of Saturday morning**

She was treading water in the middle of a colossal limestone cave. Water glittered off the stone walls and there was a cool breeze coming from the mouth of the cavern somewhere around the corner, just out of sight. It must have still been daylight out, because there was enough light to see the entirety of the grotto she found herself floating in. She maneuvered herself around the surprisingly tepid water to admire the massive stalactites and stalagmites that were sprinkled around her. Many of the stalactites, relentlessly shaped by the water that dripped from them, had reached the rock formations below, forming hourglass-shaped columns.

Hermione knew that limestone formations such as these grew extremely slowly, maximally only ten centimeters in _a thousand years_. These must have been formed over the past two-hundred thousand years; long before wizard-kind was a thought in the back of Mother Nature's head. She was in such awe of the raw power of nature that it took her several minutes of ogling to realize that she was not alone.

Sitting on the edge of the water, as young as the day she had last seen her, was her childhood friend Elizabeth from her old muggle school. As it often is in dreams, the peculiarity of the situation did not faze her, and a smile crept onto her face.

"Elizabeth! When did you get here? Would you just look at this place? Magnificent isn't it?"

Elizabeth smiled, her teeth still covered with braces, just like Hermione remembered.

"Yes, it's wonderful. I've been watching you admire it. Let's go down, shall we?" Elizabeth gestured to the water Hermione was still suspended in.

"Down?" she asked.

"Yes, down of course. You can obviously swim, and so can I. So, down we go, I say."

"What's down there?" Hermione asked.

"We'll find out, won't we, if we just go down," her friend replied.

"But how will we breathe?"

"Well, you're a witch aren't you?"

It was then that she should have realized she was not in the mortal realm. Elizabeth did not know that Hermione had magical blood. After receiving her Hogwart's letter, Hermione had told her friend that she was going to boarding school. Regrettably, her letters to her friend had slowly ebbed and they had drifted completely apart by Hermione's second year. However, it was with the indifference to absurdity that dreams provided that she ignored these facts and nodded her head in agreement.

She cast a bubble head charm on her face first (where _had_ her wand come from?), creating a large pocket of air that covered her entire face so that she could both see and breathe underwater.

Satisfied, she turned her wand to Elizabeth and repeated the spell. Inexplicably, sparks erupted from the tip, but the spell would not work. After trying twice more, eliminating the possibility of a mistake, Elizabeth shrugged at her.

"I'll just go without it, then," she said.

"But you're a…. you won't be able to breathe," Hermione stated the obvious. "You'll die!"

"We all die eventually." The young girl slipped into the placid water.

Hermione did not have time to blurt out an argument in time: Elizabeth had already taken a large breath and submerged her head under the water, creating tiny ripples in her wake. Baffled, Hermione followed her. When she went under, it immediately occurred to her that the water was much deeper than she had originally thought. In fact, there was no visible bottom in sight.

To her chagrin, Elizabeth's feet disappeared into the dark waters below, and Hermione kicked her feet in her struggle to catch up.

Tirelessly, she kicked and paddled in a downward spiral. The fearful pop of her ears and crushing pressure never arrived, as though physics did not work in this mysterious underwater cavity. Elizabeth's tiny feet had long since vanished into the abyss, but Hermione was determined to locate her. The water became darker and cooler the deeper that she swam. An indeterminate amount of time passed and she was eventually forced to take a moment to catch her breath. She looked up momentarily and discovered that the sparkling cave that she had left behind was now a mere pinhole of light above her.

Where she had been determined before, she suddenly became uneasy. How long had she been swimming anyway? How was her friend able to swim so far out of reach? A niggling question in the back of her mind nearly surfaced, _had she managed to survive?_

Suddenly, an odd glow appeared below her, distracting her unsettling thoughts. It seemed as though she may have finally reached the bottom of this impossibly deep well, because some enormous structure lay undiscovered below her, glittering and clinquant like gold. Mechanically, and by no choice of her own, it seemed, she continued her descent.

Her willpower was renewed, although her purpose had changed, and finding her friend had nearly completely drifted from her thoughts. The gleaming object was much further away than she had first judged, because the further she swam, the further away it seemed to become. Frantically, she kicked her feet faster. Her breathing became labored and bothersome feelings of anxiety fermented within her gut. Something was definitely not right.

As this notion passed through her thoughts, a shadowy thing glided silently beneath her. Whatever it was, it was large enough to obscure her view of the glowing place, and close enough to shoot fear up her spine. Panicked, she turned upwards towards the pinhole of light from whence she came, but found it had conspicuously vanished. An inhuman sound of fear rose in her mouth and she looked down again, desperate to know where the ominous figure was. The bottom was no longer visible, however, and she found herself plunged into pure darkness, unable to see anything at all. She had only just begun to weep with terror when the heaviness of sleep trickled from her body.

Abruptly, she found herself laying in her bed at home, tears still fresh on her cheeks.

**6:30 AM**

Hermione padded to the lavatory to splash water on her sweat-laden face. Still, as she got further from her bed, the vivid dream became blurred and slipped away, even as she tried to hold on to it. It perplexed her, as she was not usually prone to having nightmares, and she would definitely classify it as one. _And it had started so innocently…_

Groggy, she reached for the faucet and turned on the cool water and splashed some on her face. At last, she felt more awake and the dream had almost entirely receded into the recesses of her mind. She turned off the water and reached for the towel that hung by her sink and patted her face dry. She returned the towel and looked up into the mirror, expecting to see dark circles under her eyes from her fitful sleep. Instead, what drew her attention was something much more bizarre.

She reached her hands up to grip clumps of her bushy hair as if she had never seen it before. Due to her haircut, she had not, for once, tied it back in a knot whilst she slept to keep it from becoming unmanageable the next morning. However, now her mane was as big as ever, threatening to create its own gravitational pull if she did not tame it very soon.

Hermione subconsciously let her jaw drop as she grabbed at her long hair, which fell well past her shoulder blades. It was as if she had never cut it at all. She racked her mind with possible explanations. Hermione knew that there was a spell that would allow hair to regrow instantaneously. She clearly remembered how Mrs. Weasley would chase her son, Bill, around the Burrow with her wand, threatening to give it a good trim. At least once, she had succeeded in giving him what she thought was a proper haircut for a man of his age. That night, however, the Golden Trio had witnessed a suspicious-looking Bill creeping out of his room and entering the loo. Ron had informed them that he was fairly certain that Bill was off to regrow it. He always did.

Hermione was inexplicably reminded of her nightmare, but found that only bits and pieces of it remained. She wondered if, in her distress, she had somehow cast accidental magic and caused her hair to regrow. Sleep-casting had not happened to her in many years, but it was not entirely out of the realm of possibilities.

Eventually, she walked back to her room to grab her wand that lay on her bedside table. She nearly ran back to the bathroom and aimed her wand steadily at her hair. She whispered a cutting spell and watched as chunks of her hair fell to the bathroom floor. It was nowhere near as neat as when the barber did it, but her hair was definitely shorter. She waited patiently to see if it would spontaneously regrow.

It did not.

At least, it did not regrow in the time span that she watched it for; all of ten minutes. Any normal person may have assumed the event to be a fluke at this point, but Hermione had not forgotten the haunting occurrence out in the woods. She was on high alert for suspicious activity and this certainly qualified. So, Hermione did what she always did; she went to find her notebook.

After writing down what she remembered from her dream and the other events of the morning, Hermione went back into the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror. She childishly coaxed her eyes open one at a time while she held her breath, as if she were watching a terrifying scene from a horror film unfold. Her hair remained short and messy. She let out her breath, but somehow did not feel as relieved as she thought she would.

In fact, she could feel her heartbeat pounding in her ears and her head was beginning to throb. She forced herself to look at the silver lining. It was still Saturday and she had plenty of time to get her hair fixed and more time still to figure out what in Merlin's beard was going on with her. With this in mind, she got dressed, ran out her front door, and hurried across the anti-apparation boundary so that she could make it to the barber.

**10:00 AM**

"Just a little nick, sorry about that. I'll just call Hazel over, she's quite good with healing spells," the friendly elderly barber said to her. He used a cloth to dab at the tiny incision on her neck that he had accidentally made with his hair-cutting spell.

"No!" Hermione yelled frantically. "S-sorry, no, that won't be necessary," she stuttered, abashed at her unexpected outburst. She had just remembered that paper cut that Harry had given her. The one that had mysteriously vanished.

"Well, if you're sure," the old man said, shaking his head in bewilderment. He gave his secretary, Hazel, a strange look behind Hermione's back.

"Y-yes, I'm sure."

"Alright, well I'm all finished. It looks as good as new. Pity your nephew had to go and chop off your hair like that, it doesn't seem very kind," he said, magically collecting all of her fallen tendrils off the shop floor and vanishing them. "I guess children will be children! You can pay up front, dear; Hazel will take care of you. Thanks for dropping in, come see us again, alright?"

**10:30 AM**

She nearly tripped over her paunchy cat as she burst through her front door, eager to go look at her hair and the tiny cut on her neck. Crookshanks gave her a very irritated glare and continued suffocating the mouse he had found in guest bedroom. She skidded to a halt in front of her mirror and forced herself to take several deep breaths before she steeled herself to look closer

Her hair looked exactly how it did yesterday when she was with Ginny. However, when she looked closer at the side of her neck where she knew the barber had cut her, she found that the cut had vanished, just like the paper cut from before. Her eyes grew wide and she let out an odd squeak as she felt around the area in case she had missed it.

Stunned, she stared in the mirror for several minutes for the second time that day with her mouth slightly ajar. Crookshanks walked into the bathroom just then and broke her attention, instantly breaking her moment of shock and launching her into a blind panic.

"I just knew it! I knew it was too good to be true! I'm never trusting St. Mungo's again. What do I do, Crooks? Oh, Circe, should I call Harry? No, I can't do that. Why, of all weeks is Saul out of town? Okay, don't panic. You're Hermione Granger. Think. Rationally."

Big yellow eyes stared at her, unimpressed with her theatrics. She watched him turn and focus his attention on the bathroom rug he was fond of destroying. He stretched dramatically, and turned to glance at her devilishly before beginning to rip and tear at it to wear down his claws.

"Crookshanks, you little beast," she yelled at him, momentarily distracted from the issue at hand. "Guess who is about to get his nails cut? Get back here!"

The orange kneazle had already taken off into the kitchen, quite determined to avoid his fate. Hermione scowled, but then realized that he had given her an idea.

She took her wand out and pointed it at her left palm, which she had unfurled in front of her. She had never purposely injured herself before, but this was quite a different matter.

"Okay, just a little cut, here it goes," she steeled herself to make a careful incision.

"Lacero," she whispered. She watched as a long, thin wound appeared on her outstretched hand. She could see the blood rising to the top, threatening to spill out. Only a few seconds ticked by before she watched the skin on either side of the wound begin to stitch itself back together. She blinked again and it had completely healed. A small amount of blood remained on her skin, but looked as though it had come from nowhere at all. Hermione gawked at her hand.

"What is happening to me?" she asked no one in particular.

Being who she was, though, she was already wondering the extent to which this affected her. _Is it my whole body? Can I heal burns? What if I chopped off my pinky toe? _

Hermione had already started a lengthy list by the time she got her hands on her journal. Before she did anything rash, she wrote everything down and made sure it was in a sensible order. Prior to reaching the items that were too complicated, or dangerous for that matter, she would visit the library.

She went into her kitchen, the least likely spot to catch something on fire, and pulled out her wand once more and pointed it at her bare foot.

"Incendio," she said clearly. Orange flames poured from the tip of her wand and landed directly on top of her foot. She immediately grimaced in severe pain.

"Ouch!" she cried out, but insisted on making the injury worse than the one before. She felt mad for doing this to herself, but her intense curiosity, not to mention total panic had completely overwhelmed her.

She examined the seared remains. The entire top of her foot was charred black with burnt flesh. The center of the wound was the worst, where the flames had borne a hole through the top layers of her skin and worked its way into the muscle. A moiety of interstitial fluid mixed with dark red blood could be seen, but the blood vessels had mostly been cauterized by the intense heat. The pain was not the worst she had felt, but the smell reminded her of the war, and she felt nauseous staring at it. She was forced to look away for a moment so she did not gag.

She did not have time to consider whether she had made a mistake in harming herself so recklessly, for by the time her glance returned to her scorched foot, the outskirts of the wound had mended itself. In another two seconds, the worst part of the burn had grown new muscle tissue and covered itself with several layers of fresh skin. The pain was completely gone, but she could not forget how badly it had hurt.

She knew it must have something to do with the man in Argentina, but she had never heard of something like this. Nearly instantaneous healing without the use of magic? Immediately, she thought of Voldemort and knew he would have surely kidnapped her and tortured her for information on how to obtain this exceptional ability. She thanked the powers-that-be that he was rotting somewhere.

After marveling at her healthy foot a bit more, she made her way to her bedroom and packed a bag to take with her to the Ministry of Magic. It was time to do what she did best; research.

**3:00 PM**

Hermione sat at the Ministry's library surrounded by a variety of tomes. She had already ran her hands through her short hair upwards of three hundred times. Parts of it were standing clear on end, and she was thankful that there were so few people roaming about on a Saturday. She closed the small book she held in her hand and took a deep calming breath. Although she had been unable to find anything after several hours, she did not give up hope. _Perhaps there might be something in the archives on the 9__th__ floor._

With this in mind, she checked out a few of the books that she had not gotten a chance to skim through, packed them in her bag, and headed for the Ministry lifts. As the lifts opened, she patted her head to tame her curls and ignored the tug of curiosity as to why her hair remained short still. She was paranoid that she was going to be around someone and it spontaneously decided to regrow. _Maybe I should have worn a hat, _she worried to herself as the lifts closed with her inside.

**3:45 PM**

Sometime later, the brightest witch of her age was sitting at her work desk surrounded by books and journals in a similar fashion as she found herself before, in the library. The only difference was that the books that encircled her now were quite a bit rarer than the ones she had perused at the public library, even those found in the restricted section. Most witches and wizards did not even realize that the books held in the Unspeakable's archives existed. The public had either never known of their existence, believed that the rare books had gone missing long ago, or thought they had been destroyed. Rare book collectors were always on the prowl for extraordinary books and were known to scour the world for one-of-a-kind books like those that she held in her hands. Hermione thought it was somewhat of a pity that she could not inform them of their whereabouts. However, she also felt devious delight that she was one of the few and fortunate who could skim their antique pages.

She took a furtive sniff of the ancient book, because she enjoyed the smell, but then closed it and rubbed the spot between her eyes.

"I never thought I'd say this, Dorian, but these books aren't helping," she grumbled to her mechanical office pet. He beeped at her from his faux-window perch, hopped down from it, and scuttled over to her.

"Have you ever heard of automatic healing? I don't know what else to call it. My body heals after being injured. I don't know the extent of it yet, and of course it's a Saturday so everyone's out of the office. Maybe it has something to do with the syzygy of the Earth and moon? I'm running out of ideas here," she muttered to the creature.

Dorian let out a thoughtful sound and then was quiet in apparent thought. Hermione furrowed her brow and considered her next move. It was quiet for several minutes before…

"Ouch! Bloody hell, Dorian you foul little insect! What is wrong with you?!" Herrmione cursed at him even as blood dripped from her leg through her pants, and onto her office floor. She had dropped to one knee in pain and shock. Looking at the blood that was pooling on the ground was making her slightly dizzy, but for research's sake she rolled up her pant leg to assess the damage. She wiped at her eyes which had filled with tears of pain and looked, with Dorian, at his deceitful work.

The bottoms of Dorian's six mechanical legs were more pincer-like than anything else, and they were quite sharp. On more than one occasion he had scurried across the stone floor in a hurry and stepped on Hermione's shoe, stabbing all the way through to her foot, much to her chagrin. This was much worse, and it had been on purpose: the tiny devil had _stabbed _her right in the calf! By the looks of the blood that had congealed on the pointed tip of his front left talon, the wound was about an inch in diameter and possibly two inches deep.

As she expected, five seconds later the wound was no more.

"The second you're not looking, I'm going to dismantle you," Hermione growled at him, despite her miraculous recovery.

Dorian squawked at her and scurried away, eerily similar to furry pet at home.

"And you're going to clean this up!"

**Review please! **

**FYI: My obsession with Crookshanks probably stems from owning two cats. I'm just saying, if you own cats and you live alone, you probably understand where I'm coming from!**

**Let me know what you think! **Reviews = life.


	5. Immortal

Immortal, 5

**Immortal**

**Sunday, 5 AM**

She could not sleep. Granted, she had spent up until the last hour pouring over ancient texts that, legally speaking, she should not have taken from her office. Spontaneous healing sounds great and all, until it actually happens to you. Not to mention she was not entirely sure that was all that was going on, why it was happening, and especially why it was happening to her. She kept thinking back to the eerie phrase the man in the jungle had uttered to her before committing suicide.

'_Avenge her." _Avenge who?

She had already muddled her way through the first few stages of grief. Technically, she thought the phases might be overlapping, because every once in a while she would just sit there astounded for a few minutes before she could focus on researching. Denial was, she suspected, going to be the shortest phase. Hermione was nothing if not a pragmatist and it would not do to reject the facts. The facts were, as of who knows how long, though she strongly suspected two weeks ago in the jungle, she could now withstand getting pierced and burned. It hurt just as any other injury would hurt, but the pain was quite fleeting. A masochistic bundle of ideas lurked in the darker parts of her mind (_'Cut off your toe!'_ and _'Jump off the roof!'_). This brought in the next stage of grief, bypassing bargaining (who was she going to bargain to, anyway?); guilt.

She was finally coming around to the idea that she may have acted rashly in harming herself. Also, she was worried about her state of mind with the suggestions of more to come. It was just that, well, she had always strived to be extraordinary. She had succeeded in many ways; doing extremely well in school, becoming a war heroine, getting hand-selected to become an Unspeakable. However, although she had above-average magical abilities, she had always had to work incredibly hard; much more-so than those with pure natural talent. She envied those witches and wizards who could memorize lists effortlessly and master spells and enchantments without breaking a sweat. She was proud of how far she had come, thought, partly because she was muggleborn.

More guilt crept into her core as she faced an onslaught of flashbacks. She thought back to all the times she aggressively stood up for muggleborns and argued that they could be just as good as, or better, than purebloods. She could not ever tell anyone that she felt more than a little smug about besting them in things. Her parents had taught her to be humble in her strengths and not to gloat, but damn it if she did not do it secretly in her own mind. She was not sure if she could say it out loud, but she felt doubly guilty because, while absolutely terrifying, she also found this newfound ability resolutely fascinating. It was even more so, because it was happening to her for once. Not Harry, not Dumbledore, but _her. _

"Gods, I sound like Ronald," she said aloud, scrunching up her face in dismay.

Hermione dealt with her guilt and grief as the sun rose slowly from outside her bedroom window, blissfully ignorant of her turmoil.

**9 AM Sunday**

Hermione grunted and leaned over to her bedside table. She opened the drawer and pulled out a clear vial full of a violet-colored potion. She popped the cork and drained the contents into her mouth. She barely had time to put the empty bottle back on the table before she fell into a deep sleep.

**4 PM Sunday**

She woke up confused as to where she was. It was light out but she felt like she had slept for days. A heavy weight was settled on her chest and a piercing gaze bored into her skull.

"Oh Crooks, what time is it?" she asked the orange cat perched upon her chest, not expecting a response. He huffed and jumped down off her bed, swishing his bottle-brush tail as he walked towards the door. He obviously expected her to follow him. He blinked saucily at her a few times to entice her.

Hermione grumbled and flipped the bed covers back and stepped out. After feeding the beasty, she decided to make some tea to wake her up. She glanced at the clock on the wall and found it was past four in the afternoon and immediately realized that she was late to the weekly burrow outing. She could not decide if she wanted to go or not after everything that had happened in the past few days. As she was pondering, she heard a tapping sound at the kitchen window.

Outside, a tiny owl was fluttering around and carrying a tiny parcel. After confirming the killer kneazle was out of sight, she let it in and opened the letter. It was quite short.

_Hermione,_

_Are you coming to the Burrow? Bill's here and you'll never guess what he got as a pet! A baby griffin! A GRIFFIN! I'll admit, it's cute now, but what is he going to do when it's lion-sized? He thinks it'll let him ride it when it's full grown, but Ron thinks it'll eat him first. Anyway, come show off your fancy new hair, everyone will be here for supper as usual._

_Ginny_

Hermione smiled at the letter, but shook her head in dismay. Leave it to the dragon-wrangler to bring home a baby Griffin. She wondered where he even found one. They were supposed to be quite rare. Hermione ran her empty hand through her hair and gulped. Ignoring the impatient hoot from the mail-carrier, she made her way to the bathroom and confirmed her suspicions. Her hair lay in waves down her back once again. _Would it always be the same length? _

An inkling of a dreadful thought surfaced in her mind (a_lways?)_, but she pushed it away. She would have to talk to her boss about this before she got any more crazy ideas. She would have to get better at cutting her hair too, it seemed. Or she would have to lie about how much she initially liked the cut and say she grew it out again after having second thoughts. The latter option sounded better; otherwise she would be cutting her hair every morning for months. She felt marginally bad about lying to Ginny, but the fact was she had been lying to everyone for years and had no intention of stopping now. _What was one more little white lie?_

Resigned, she scribbled out her response and sent it off with the small owl. There was just too much to research today, despite really wanting to see that griffin.

**Tuesday, 11 AM**

Saul was not in the office Monday. Nor was he there today, so far. He had told her it could be a week, but this made day eight. It was not unusual for him to be off by a few days in his estimation, but why did it have to be _this_ week?

Groaning, she finished a report for work and placed it neatly on the corner of her desk. She had already rifled through all the documents pertaining to the field mission to Argentina, but nothing gave her any clues. She leaned back in her chair and started to space out. Dorian was dozing with one eye open on his perch, still wary of Hermione's wrath after he stabbed her with his pincer a few days ago. Many clocks of various shapes and sizes tick-tocked on the walls around her. A giant magical hour glass turned itself upside down and she lazily watched purple sand fall to the bottom of the empty chamber. She momentarily wondered if her ability would be a part of her until she died, or whether it would wear off after a while.

_And where the hell was Saul?_ She had about a million questions to ask him. She eventually decided to take an early lunch just to get out of the Ministry for a while and get some fresh air. She had been thinking too much about her problem and without her boss here to question about the incident, she did not know what else to do. The fact was, Saul probably was not going to be able to help her, regardless, but it made her feel better to have a plan in mind since her precious books had failed her.

However, she was a creature of habit and at the last second she grabbed one of the only unread library books she had checked out, and decided to take it with her just in case she found a new lead.

The lifts opened in the Ministry's atrium and Hermione stepped out, only to immediately spot the blondest of brats, sitting near the giant fountain. She kept her head down and fought the childish urge to cover her face with her bag so he could not possibly notice her.

Her luck was getting increasingly worse as the day progressed.

"Granger, I don't usually see you out of your dungeon at this hour. To what do us mere mortals owe the pleasure," he drawled, folding up the Daily Prophet and standing to greet her. His hair was the same as it had been since after graduating Hogwarts; stylishly tousled in a way that said 'I woke up like this'. She trusted him so little that she even doubted the sincerity of his hair.

"Very funny, I'm just going to get some air and have some lunch, not that it's any of your business," she quipped.

He smirked at her, "You're not one for civilities are you? Don't they teach you manners down there?"

She glared at him and started to push past him, "Malfoy".

"I heard you were in St. Mungo's a few weeks ago," he pressed casually.

She turned on her heel and bared her teeth at him, unwilling to accidentally put forth more information than he already knew. She knew his tricks. She turned away and walked briskly towards the exit.

He called out to her retreating back, "We're becoming good friends, don't you think?" She heard him let out a bark-like laugh that she had never heard before. She pictured his perfect teeth gleaming like a wolf under the fluorescent lights.

_What was with him lately?_

**12:30 PM**

Hermione finished eating her lunch and sat outside a small café on the outskirts of the London skimming through the book she brought. She had just finished dog-earing a corner of her book when a flash of light went zooming over her head, so close that it ruffled her hair. A moment later she heard a loud sound as the spell hit a wall behind her. Pieces of brick exploded into the air and toppled loudly to the ground.

Her reflexes were still dependably sharp from the war and were further honed by many years as an Unspeakable. Her wand was out in a fraction of a second. The half read book tumbled to the ground without notice.

Several people screamed. Herrmione turned to look at the spell damage to the building and saw a woman and a child running away, out of the corner of her eye. The rest of the muggles fled in their wake. Another spell shot from behind her and blue lightning zoomed over her ear, singing it.

Discretion was obviously thrown out the window. Although she could not see her attackers, she shot off several spells in the general direction she thought theirs had come from. Several other buildings were hit, causing additional destruction. The final spell exploded in flames on the brick wall and tiny fireballs rained down onto the sidewalk. A few pieces of stray trash caught on fire.

Ringing silence hung in the air for only a second, but it seemed like an eternity to Hermione. No witch or wizard stepped forward and Hermione took that time to cast two complex shield charms on herself. She crept up behind a newspaper dispenser, crouched low, and took a deep breath to calm herself.

Suddenly, ropes flew from an alley way to her left and wrapped around the dispenser, one of her legs, and one of her arms. Her wand was knocked away from her, but she could just barely reach it when she stretched. She quickly used a severing charm on the ropes on her arm, but two assailants were already exiting the alley way and coming right at her. They were dressed in bright red hooded robes with silver trim and their faces were covered with the same material. Only their eyes showed, and they looked determined and deadly. A third assailant appeared twenty feet behind her with a 'crack'. All three had their wands drawn and were pointed at her. She finally got the last rope around her leg disengaged, but they had closed in on her.

Somewhere to her right she heard a familiar voice bellow, "Bombarda maxima!". The cobblestone road to her right exploded and she instinctively raised her arm to cover her face. Shrapnel dug into her right side and her thigh. She could feel embedded bits of rock in her skin, but there was no way she could stop to assess the damage. One of the assailants, a man, she could tell now, screamed loudly.

She stood up, shook herself free and jumped through the stone dust past the hole that had just been created in the street. The man that had yelled lay crumpled half on the street and half on the sidewalk. It was clear now why he had called out. The entire lower half of his left leg lay six feet away from the rest of his body, in the middle of the road. Hermione did not have time to dwell on this, because she had already fired off her next round of spells at the remaining hooded figures.

They blocked each curse she sent at them and fired more in return, but it looked as though they were now unsure of themselves. Glancing at their fallen comrade, the taller figure motioned to the other figure towards the alley way. Without acknowledging the action, the shorter of the two pointed her wand at the man in the street and made a motion with her wand. The man disappeared, along with his severed leg. All the while, her comrade was firing off spells at both Hermione and her unexpected accomplice. Hermione used a complicated wand motion to block the spell, but it only half worked and she felt part of the spell hit her wand hand. Pain rippled up her arm, but the injuries, whatever they were, were non-life threatening. Angrily she sent a nasty spell back.

As if the hooded figures had read each other's minds, the two unexpectedly linked forearms and disapparated with a 'pop' leaving only the remains of the damaged muggle street behind them. At some point in the short but intense battle, a nearby fire hydrant had been hit and water shot into the air and landed with a splash. A tiny river of water flowed down the side of the street, mixed with the blood of the fallen man, and vanished into a storm drain. Rubble from explosions littered the sidewalk and streets. Flames were flickering on the side of a nearby building. She could hear sirens rapidly approaching.

Her heart was still beating very quickly, but she finally had time to look at the only other person on this pitiful, destroyed street.

"Malfoy!" she sputtered, pointing at him accusingly. "I should have known you would have something to do with this!"

"I had nothing to do with that, Granger! Well I had a little bit to do with it, but hey! I saved your ass back there! Don't I get a little bit of, oh, I don't know, maybe a 'thank you' would be nice!" He yelled back at her, thoughtlessly brandishing his wand at her. They were separated by ten meters, yelling at each other, covered in dust and blood, when the wailing sirens rounded the corner.

They reluctantly made a unanimous, albeit silent, decision to disapparate back to the the Ministry of Magic.

**1:15 PM**

"Just what the hell was that about?!" she rounded on him the second they appeared inside the atrium. The anti-apparation wards had been lifted in the atrium after Voldemort had been vanquished.

"Keep your voice down, Granger, or do you want the whole bloody world to know what just happened?" he snarled at her discreetly.

Her mouth hung open and she looked apoplectic. She opened and closed her mouth several times and her eyebrows were raised nearly to her hairline.

"Oh shut your mouth, you look like a shrake*. If you hadn't noticed, you're starting to draw a lot of attention. Don't flip your wig about it, but I'm going to need you to take this-" he said, slipping off his finely tailored black robe and holding it out to her, "-and put it on."

She curled her lip up in disgust, "I am not wearing your disgusting piece of –"

"Disgusting?!" he cut her off. "This cost me nearly two-hundred galleons!" He barely caught his own scandalized shriek. "Merlin, that is entirely not the point you dimwit. You're covered in blood! And if it had somehow escaped your notice, you're missing half your finger. Take the robe," he demanded through gritted teeth.

She glanced down at her hand in alarm. With all the adrenaline pumping through her veins, it had indeed missed her notice. What was worse was that he was right; her arm was covered in blood, as was her right side and thigh that was hit by stone shrapnel, and she was obviously covered in soot. She looked around. Several people were indeed staring.

It was probably already strange enough for people to see the pair of them talking at all. It was well known that they were not cut from the same cloth, nor did they run in the same circles. As much as the Malfoy family pretended to be post-war philanthropists, she knew better than to believe a word out of their mouths. Needless to say, their life-paths rarely crossed. Add to that the fact that she looked like she had just been personally bombed, and she had a perfect recipe for the front cover of Witch Weekly.

"Fine," she snarled, and snatched it out of his outstretched hand. He rolled his eyes at her while she put it on over her filthy clothing. He made a personal note to burn it when this whole thing was over with.

They walked together in silence towards the lifts, doing their best to appear inconspicuous. As he walked behind her, he silently cast a charm on her hair to tame it.

"How dare y-"she began angrily.

"You look like you're in an 80's muggle band," he countered.

**1:45 PM**

They waited for the lifts in silence. When the lift finally clattered open and the occupants exited, they boarded.

Standing two feet away from each other, Hermione tried not to breathe in Malfoy's scent from the designer robe draped over her shoulders. It made the situation even more surreal than it already was. She was simply going to have to take the longest shower of all time when she got home.

"Where are we going to go to talk about this? We certainly can't go to my office," Malfoy said, wishing the lift doors would close already. They were charmed to stay open for a full thirty seconds before closing to allow all passengers to get on and off safely.

"Well you obviously aren't allowed in the Department of Mysteries," Hermione said in a voice she typically reserved for five-year-olds. "Why don't we meet in the library and cast a 'muffliato' charm so no one can overhear us?"

The wizard appeared to mull this over for a moment and seemed to come to a similar conclusion. "Well, it's not ideal but obviously we have to go somewhere and I'm probably right in assuming you won't be reasonable and go somewhere besides the Ministry with me?" He looked at her pointedly.

"With you? Alone? Absolutely not," she scoffed. "I have a change of clothes in my office, though, so I'd like to do that first. You can either go to the library now and I'll meet you there, or you can wait in the hallway on the ninth floor."

"I'll just wait," he said. As if the lifts had sensed their decision, the doors finally started to close. They sprung open once again, however, when a large, calloused hand reached inside the lift.

"Going down?" he asked them, smiling crookedly.

"Saul!" Hermione declared. "You're back!" In her delight, she inadvertently lifted her arms up, exposing the sad state of her clothes. Thankfully, the lift doors closed behind him and he pushed the button for the ninth floor.

"You look like you've had a rough day," Saul said, eyeing her up and down, and then looking at their third. "Malfoy," he said simply.

"Sir," the younger wizard said in response.

"Since when do you two know each other," Hermione asked them. "And since when do you call him '_sir'_? Did I stumble into a parallel universe and not realize it? Am I dreaming?"

_(We'll find out, won't we, if we just go down.)_

Ignoring her, Malfoy grabbed her arm and held her hand up. He peered at it closely, and it was obvious suddenly that she had not exercised proper caution.

"Your pinky looks a mite better," he said with a very straight face, looking her in the eye. Saul looked back and forth between the two.

Hermione snatched her hand away from him, but it was too late. He had already seen. She flushed, frantically trying to come up with some excuse as to why she suddenly had a whole digit where there had just been half of one a few minutes ago.

"I-I…" she stumbled over her words. "You see…Well, what happened is…"

Saul let out a large breath of air he seemed to be holding and said, "I see we've reached some big conclusions while I've been away. Cut the excuses, Hermione. He knows. And so do I, for that matter." The lift descended slowly, and it was a miraculous thing that not a single witch or wizard decided to get on or off. The three of them rode together alone.

Hermione was not sure what to do. She was stuck in an elevator with people she was not even sure she knew anymore. So, she did what she did best, she lied and avoided.

"I'm not sure what you mean," she said, unconsciously backing into the corner.

"Yes, you do," Malfoy said seriously.

"N-no. What could you possibly mean?" She heard the tremor in her voice and she cursed the Gods that she could not prevent it from appearing, unwanted.

Malfoy and Saul looked at each other and turned to her. The lift finally reached its destination of the lowest floor, and the lift doors opened into a dimly lit corridor. Hermione could not help but mentally compare this event to arriving at Hell's gates. No one moved to exit, but Saul cleared his throat and put a hand on her shoulder, as if to brace her.

"Hermione," he put a hand on her shoulder. "You're an immortal."

* * *

From HP Wiki:  
* A **Shrake** is a magically-created species of fish, found in the Atlantic Ocean. The creature is covered in spines and seeks out and destroys Muggle fishing nets. The first Shrakes were supposedly created in the early 1800's by a group of wizard fisherfolk who had been insulted by Muggles.

**Please review :]**


	6. Welcome to Eternity

Immortal, 6

**Welcome to Eternity**

**Tuesday, 8 PM**

Hermione sat at her desk and listened to the many clocks that hung on the walls around her. The enchanted window where Dorian was perched allowed moonlight to stream in, but no other light breached her office. She sat in the darkness, as she had for the past several hours. She leaned forwards and backwards occasionally, which earned a feeble 'squeak' from her desk chair to add with the various ticking sounds. Dorian let out a few auto-tuned snores, here and there. Finally, the plasma clock on her desk did a summersault with a wet-sounding 'bloop' once every five minutes.

'_It's a veritable orchestra in here,'_ she thought to herself banaly, as she thought back to the long conversation she just had with Saul and Malfoy. She had assured them both that she would go home and relax and that they would talk again tomorrow. She doubted either of them would be surprised to learn that she went back to her office tonight.

**Flashback, 3 PM**

The three of them decided to find a quiet place to talk. They chose an old conference room that the M.L.E. sometimes used for interrogations. Occasionally the Unspeakable's had to work with the M.L.E, so it was an easy favor to ask to borrow it for the afternoon.

Hermione always had a thousand questions whenever she came across anything new, and especially anything this important. She liked to know exactly what she was dealing with and how to approach the situation. However, some of the information that was divulged to her tonight was nearly beyond her capacity for comprehension.

So far she knew three things: she was immortal, Saul was immortal, and even _Malfoy _was fucking immortal.

They, like her, could heal in an instant, all without the use of spells or potions. The magic of their species – _oh Circe, I still have trouble saying it _–resided in every cell of their bodies.

She rarely saw Malfoy, but… How had Saul been immortal this whole time and she had not realized? She had worked with him on many occasions in the field and not once had she noticed anything about him so absurd as to make her accuse him of being immortal.

'_Maybe though… maybe there were times when I thought his injuries at first appeared direr than they later turned out to be. _

Indeed, his injuries always seemed unusually minor, while Hermione would sometimes leave missions appearing an inch from death, despite her practiced caution. She simply assumed the he had had more experience than she did, and that he had picked up a number of tricks along the way. It was obvious, _now, _that he had considerably more years of experience than she originally thought.

Her director had at some point, in fact, gone through exactly the confusion that she had been suffering from for weeks, and he had not told her. _Why? _Even Malfoy had lived through it.

Hermione did not yet ask about either of their transitions yet, because it seemed like it could be a sensitive subject. Malfoy for one must have turned within the past five or so years, and she could certainly see herself being a bit bitter about the whole thing for a while. _Was he tricked into this mess as well? What am I missing here? What happened around five years ago? It's on the tip of my tongue…_

"Draco is now the second youngest in our ranks, to my knowledge, and you Hermione, are the youngest. You still retain and grasp at your mortal birthday, but many immortals choose the day of their christening to be known as their 'true birth date'. It is up for you to decide. In the end it will hardly matter. What is another twenty years tacked on to an era?" Saul asked rhetorically.

"Twenty-five," Hermione corrected him offhandedly. "I would be twenty-four, but my time log has me at twenty-five at the moment."

After a brief pause, she asked the question she had been mulling over. She felt fewer qualms about being rude to the ferret, so she just came out with it.

"So, what really happened to your father five or six years ago, Malfoy?"

Draco smirked minutely before rearranging his face to be unreadable. "I knew you would make the connection, Granger; you do make such a habit out of collecting little tidbits of seemingly useless information. He died passing the curse to me, as you obviously suspected."

He stood up, covered half his mouth with his hand and paced back and forth a few times before stopping. He looked up at her and smiled in a way that said he did not think what he was about to say was funny.

"My father passed it to me, because he was being hunted," he said.

"But, why? By whom?" Hermione questioned.

Draco simply waved his hand at the older man and said, "You explain it."

Saul rubbed his face with his hand before he answered. "Okay so, stick with me here, because it's no fairy tale. A long time ago, a group of immortals staged an uprising against the committee because they disagreed with the way in which they made their decisions. This group especially thought that they deserved the supreme right to decide which mortals they passed their gift to when they chose to accept death. As you know, the supreme leaders rejected this, claiming that they made decisions in the best interest of all our kind. So, they maintained the final say in who would come in to our ranks. To the committee, holding this power prevented wicked witches and wizards from gaining immortality and ultimately made the world much safer.

"Eventually, the jilted mortal witches and wizards who were angry that their immortality was snatched from their fingertips joined their immortal comrades in arms and attempted to overthrow the committee. Luckily, many did not agree with the coup and eventually thwarted those who sought to destabilize the hierarchy that has served us for thousands of years. The insurgents were thusly imprisoned in a magical prison for the next several hundred years.

"I call the prison, 'Tartarus'," Draco interrupted.

"Yes, I was just thinking about the similarities between this and what the Gods did to the Titans," Hermione stated in an offhand manner. Draco was surprised she was being friendly for a change and he narrowed his eyes at her accordingly.

"If you like that name, you'll love what they called the door," Saul said.

"What's that?"

"The Event Horizon," Draco finished for him. "You know, like the edge of a black hole? It's the point of no return, where nothing can escape. Or rather where nothing _should _be able to escape, that is."

"Uh-oh, that sounds bad," Hermione said, a sense of dread in the pit of her stomach was growing.

"About seven years ago, right around the time of the final battle with Voldemort at Hogwarts, we were betrayed. One of the three committee members who elected to incarcerate the usurpers, Alaric is his name, decided to renege on his vote. In the dead of night, he stole into the prison and faced the Event Horizon. The man used a stolen key, the only key capable of unlocking the enchanted door. Now that he has done so, he has fled, and the rest have escaped with him. The entire immortal realm has been on guard for the past seven years," Saul said gravely.

"That's terrible!" Hermione exclaimed, and everyone nodded.

"Yea, there's just more sides on the flipside for you to pick, girly. Another war, what else would you expect? Immortals are no different from the rest of the lot after all; there's always a part of us that thirsts for blood," Saul said, shaking his head.

She thought for a moment, "But Malfoy, where does your father tie in to all of this?"

Malfoy scoffed, and said "You're a little nosey, aren't you Granger?"

She had the decency to look a little embarrassed and decided to change tactics.

She turned to her director and asked, "Did your transfer –", but she stopped herself again when she realized it might also be rude to ask what she was wondering.

Thankfully, he answered her anyway. "I was confirmed through the committee. My predecessor saw his time coming to an end and it was planned."

She flushed slightly and nodded her head, unwilling to ask him anything else so personal. _What if it had happened under poor circumstances, like Malfoy's obviously had and it brought back painful memories or something? _Knowing intimate details of their lives was making Hermione feel strange. They were all usually very private people.

However, now she needed to know more about what happened to her. _What is my origin story?_

"So… what about me, was my, um, transfer planned?" she asked. It had finally dawned on her for the first time that she might have been set up all along.

Saul cleared his throat, "Hermione, I think maybe that's enough for today. Perhaps tomorrow when you've had time to digest –"

Her eyes widened, "Sir!"

Saul grumbled out a string of expletives and Draco blew a puff of air that ruffled his fringe. Hermione could tell that they did not want to have this particular conversation at the moment, either.

"Just give me a clue!" she pressed.

"Damn it, Hermione, it was planned. I'll admit, it was a somewhat hastily laid plan, but…" Saul trailed off in a regrettable way.

"Oh, that's nice. That's really nice to hear," Hermione said sarcastically.

"Ah, also the man from Argentina is not who you think he is."

"You mean Auqui?"

"Yes, but that's not his real name. He is… was a friend of mine."

Hermione looked apoplectic. Draco snickered openly at her expression.

Saul made a sheepish gesture with his hands and said, "Didn't think I'd have to tell you this soon, to be honest." Hermione scowled at him.

"Go on."

"Well, the remaining two committee members, Bjarni and Lucretia, as well as a third temporary substitute, Hypatos, have decreed that new inductees must be tested before being told _anything_. They're being watched to see how they react to their immortality. They're all paranoid because Alaric betrayed them. Basically, they wanted to see if you were a good guy or a bad guy, Hermione. It sounds stupid when I put it that way, but that's the gist of it. I'm the one that put you up for nomination, but it was Hauh who gave you the gift. Auqui to you. Anyway, our surveillance of you was cut short when those red devils showed up and attacked you."

"So why did he give his gift up? And why did you put me up for the nomination?"

"Ah, that is a very long story, and one for another day, I'm afraid," Saul said with finality.

Seeing that she wouldn't be able to get Saul to talk about that subject, Hermione turned to the blonde. "Yes, so what was going on back there at the muggle plaza, Malfoy?" She asked, subconsciously rubbing her regenerated finger. Surprisingly, he was willing to respond for a change.

He started pacing before he spoke. "Well, I already knew about the committee's decision to turn you, and I didn't trust you not to fall into the wrong hands before figuring out the intricacies of your immortality. So, okay I followed you a bit…and I was just waiting for a sign that you knew you had changed…"

"I don't mean why you were following me, you twit, I meant why were those people attacking us!" Hermione said, annoyed.

"Oh, right, well I guess at the heart of it, they just want to steal your immortal soul," he said off-handedly.

Hermione blanched, and he continued.

"There are basically two ways to become like one of us. The first way is to be chosen in your mortal form by an Immortal who wants to give up his or her curse and pass the burden on to another. This choice is then submitted to and debated by the committee. Of course, not all these decisions go through planned judgment, as you know. The second unavoidable way that some transfers happen is during times of duress. Here is where _they_ come in," he paused and looked Hermione in the eye.

"The witches and wizards who attacked us today… are one and the same as the devils who escaped from Tartarus. They've ramped up their attacks recently; some of them are getting incredibly desperate for such a terrible curse, in my opinion."

Saul cut in then, "When someone steals an Immortal's soul, it is different from the methods employed by dementors. Dementors consume the convict's soul and destroy it, because they are destruction and fear at their cores. When an Immortal's soul is ripped out and put into the body of another, this will instead create an immortal out of the one who was mortal. In other words, a transfer does not require a willing soul, only a soul offered."

That sounded awful enough, but still there was more.

"The transferred immortal soul must first battle with the mortal soul. When the superior immortal soul wins dominance – yes, Hermione, they almost always win – it is allowed entry into the host where it resides forever. Whole souls, of course, only retain some of the traits of their former owners. Usually, intact souls actually become somewhat purified once they leave their human hosts. The mortal and immortal souls then intertwine, reinforcing the mortal's magic with that of ancient sorcery and immortality," Saul said matter-of-factly. She wondered how many people he had given this talk to. _Just how old was he?_

"As of yet, you don't seem to be afflicted with any worrisome effects of your soul's last host. Have you noticed anything?" Saul asked her, eyeing her bloodied form.

Hermione thought for a moment and then answered, "I don't know, I've felt a little reckless lately, but I'm not sure if that's just because of all the new revelations or whether it could possibly have something to do with it's last – oh, I don't like it when you call it a host. It sounds creepy," Hermione said, looking at him dreadfully.

Malfoy snorted as he leaned lithely against a bookshelf.

"What's so funny, Malfoy?" Hermione demanded.

"Actually, I was just wondering what a reckless Granger might look like. I think my head might explode," he joked meanly.

"You know what? You are just as entitled with your giftof immortality as you were with your father's money," Hermione bit out, sick of his pompous comments.

"I'm sorry, did I hear you say _'gift'_, Granger?" the blonde asked, swiveling his whole body so that it was aggressively facing her. "Please tell me you've figured out by now that this isn't a gift! It's a curse!"

"Now's not the best time for that, is it, Draco?" Saul reprimanded.

"Now's the perfect time!" he shouted at the Italian man. "Now's the only time," he spoke softer.

Actually, there was just too much information to take in, and as much as Hermione wanted to learn it all, her body was telling her that she needed a break.

"I don't think I can take any more of this tonight," she said tiredly.

Saul came up beside her and placed his arm on her shoulder once more and said, "I don't blame you, Hermione. Why don't you go and get some rest, huh?"

Hermione nodded bleakly and unconvincingly said, "Sure."

Saul looked at Malfoy who looked more tired than he'd seen him in a while. "You should get some rest too. We'll need to call a meeting about what happened to you two tonight and have you fill out a report. Do you think you can do it tonight or tomorrow morning while it's still fresh on your mind?"

Malfoy looked like he was about to refuse, but then said, "Yea, better get this over with soon. But let's do it tomorrow morning, alright?"

"Sure, just set some extra wards tonight, will ya? I don't think they'd come back twice in the same day, but you can never be too careful. You can give me your account tomorrow too, Hermione," Saul said in his best sympathetic voice, which still sounded grisly at best. She simply nodded in acquiesce, but for all he knew, she wasn't listening to him.

"Hmmm," Saul pondered, and then decided to save it for another day. "Let's get on with it Malfoy. They've got a private conference room I think the minister would let me borrow for this type of interrogation. Why don't you meet me by the fountain tomorrow at 9 AM and we can head to it.

"Interrogation?" Malfoy implored.

"Ah, we'll just call it a debriefing, if ya want," Saul said grumpily. "But I'm going to be asking ya a lot of questions."

The blonde huffed, but did not argue. The two men turned to Hermione who was currently staring off into space.

"Well, we'll be heading off. Let's chat first thing in the morning after my meeting with Malfoy, I know you will be wanting to ask more questions, I know how you are. Unless you'd rather hear it from Draco, of course," Saul joked.

Hermione's head snapped up and she scowled at him in a 'don't be preposterous' kind of way.

Draco rolled his eyes and turned for the exit. Saul let out a short laugh and followed him. After they pushed the button for the lift, Hermione remembered something she had forgotten to ask before.

"Wait," she called out, "I have one more question."

"Of course you do," the blonde muttered under his breath.

"My hair grew back. I got my hair cut and it grew back overnight," she brought her fingers unconsciously to her thick tendrils.

Malfoy laughed, but she was not sure if it was meant to be a mean laugh or a bitter laugh.

"You'll never change," he said. She briefly thought that he was speaking of her incessant need to ask questions, but then he continued. "You'll wake up every day and any physical alterations you make to your body will be reverted to the way you were the day before. You will always look the way you do now, forever and ever. You'll never change."

Hermione was taken aback suddenly at how like his 18-year-old self Malfoy still looked. Of course, she had always been jealous of the way his body never seemed to age, and although his father was quite despicable, Lucius Malfoy still retained the exact same ability. Now she knew that his beauty would be forever stalled in time. He already sounded much older. What would happen when he was a century old and he was still trapped in such a young body?

_What will I do?_

All the moisture in her body felt like it had evaporated. Her mouth was bone dry and her eyes felt red and irritated. Hermione stared in their direction, but did not say a word while the two esoteric men boarded the lift.

"Welcome to eternity, Granger," the blonde man said, as the lift doors closed and he vanished from sight.

**11 PM**

After Malfoy and Saul had departed, she went to her office on basement level nine and listened to the ticks tocks from a hundred clocks.

At just past ten PM, she gathered up her things and went home. When she lay down in bed, she finally let the tears flow. After a few minutes, Crookshanks padded into her bedroom and hopped up on her bed to comfort her.

"Oh Crooks," Hermione said sullenly, "What would I do without you?"

The orange half-kneazle nuzzled her hand with his head, purring. Hermione couldn't help but think about how miserably short his lifespan was compared to hers.

She was nearly taken aback by the sudden comprehension of the inevitable fact that all her friends would die before her. All her friends and her family and every acquaintance she would ever meet and every person currently alive and their children and their children's children and…

Malfoy's words smacked her in the face once more.

_Welcome to eternity, Granger._

* * *

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Lots and lots of plot. I realize it's a tad depressing, but it's necessary. I completely tore this chapter apart and moved everything around so hopefully it's coherent. Also had to move some things into chapters 7 and 8 because it seemed like too much dialogue. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed!

If you did….

**Please please please review! **

P.S. I also edited the first 5 chapters of this story for inconsistencies, typos, and general rewording. The main content is the same, though.


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